leave someone high and dry
leave someone high and dry verb: to abandon somebody; to stop providing assistance at a crucial moment.
Verb
leave someone high and dry (third-person singular simple present leaves someone high and dry, present participle leaving someone high and dry, simple past and past participle left someone high and dry)
- To abandon somebody; to stop providing assistance at a crucial moment.
- He just walked out and left her high and dry with two kids and a mortgage.
- When the Met first reached Chesham, in 1889, the townsfolk thought the growth of their town would be inexorable as a result. [...] The cry went up 'At last, we are on the main line!' And so they were - for three years, until the Met decided to carry on to Amersham, leaving Chesham high and dry on a...2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 76, 77
Forms of leave someone high and dry
| third-person singular present | leaves someone high and dry |
|---|---|
| present participle | leaving someone high and dry |
| past participle | left someone high and dry |
| past | left someone high and dry |
Questions about leave someone high and dry
- What does leave someone high and dry mean?
- Leave someone high and dry means to abandon somebody; to stop providing assistance at a crucial moment.
- What part of speech is leave someone high and dry?
- Leave someone high and dry is a verb.
- What is the past tense of leave someone high and dry?
- The past tense of leave someone high and dry is left someone high and dry.
Words near leave someone high and dry in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: leave someone high and dry (page history and authors). 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-leave someone high and dry.ogg.
Cite this entry: “leave someone high and dry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leave_someone_high_and_dry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.