Word.ws English Dictionary

high and dry

high and dry adjective: left out of water, stranded on a beach, or in the stocks for repair, or in dry dock.

Adjective

high and dry (not comparable)

  1. Left out of water, stranded on a beach, or in the stocks for repair, or in dry dock.
  2. (idiomatic) Abandoned, stranded, helpless.
  3. (derogatory, idiomatic) Associated with the high church (the Church of England and other Anglican traditions, in reference to their "high" political position in England and "dry" and austere mode of worship), as opposed to the "low and slow" Evangelical party and the "broad and shallow" Broad Church.
    • "There are two recognized parties in the church of England, the old High-and-dry church party, and the so-called Evangelical. To one or other of these two the Anglo-Catholic must conform."1844, A. H. Maltby, The New Englander, volume 2, page 321
  4. (US, idiomatic, slang) With no condiments.

high and dry meaning in Urdu and Malayalam

high and dry in Urdu

بےآسرا, مجبور

high and dry in Malayalam

helpless, destitute, bereft
അശരണമായ, ഒന്നും ചെയ്യാനാകാത്ത അവസ്ഥയിലായ, ഗതിയറ്റ, അശരണ, നിരാശ്രയമായ, ദുഖിതനും ഏകനും ആയ

Synonyms of high and dry

1 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of high and dry

Words formed from high and dry

Questions about high and dry

What does high and dry mean?
High and dry means left out of water, stranded on a beach, or in the stocks for repair, or in dry dock.
What is high and dry in Urdu?
High and dry in Urdu is بےآسرا, مجبور. See High and dry meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is high and dry?
High and dry is an adjective.

Words near high and dry in the dictionary

  1. High Abbotside
  2. high adventure
  3. High Alemannic
  4. high altar
  5. high altars
  6. high and dry
  7. high and low
  8. High and Low Bishopside
  9. high and mighties
  10. high and mighty
  11. high and tight

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: high and dry (page history and authors); high and dry (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); high and dry (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-high and dry.ogg.

Cite this entry: “high and dry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/high_and_dry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.