roughdry

roughdry verb: in laundry work, to dry without smoothing or ironing.

Verb

roughdry (third-person singular simple present roughdries, present participle roughdrying, simple past and past participle roughdried)

(transitive) In laundry work, to dry without smoothing or ironing.
- Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently roughdried and starched.1906, O. Henry, The Four Million
- From Miss Purchase— who nearly killed herself over his shirts, starching and ironing them, and nearly drove me crazy because she roughdried my clothes — down to the blacksmith's where Stephen took his riding horse to be shod, my husband was a general favorite .1910, “A Successful Wife”, in Everybody's Magazine, volume 23, page 113
To dry shaped bricks before they are fired in a kiln.
- He had a cough which spoke sometimes of roughdried bricks in a builder's yard, and his calf muscles spoiled the particoloured set of his stockings.1999, Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

roughdry (comparative more roughdry, superlative most roughdry)

Having been dried but not ironed.
- At the time of the injury appellant was operating a flatwork ironer, wheras thereafter her duties were confined solely to the folding of roughdry laundry, a duty which did not involve the same amount of dexterity or physical exertion as the job she was performing at the time of the injury.1956, Decisions of the Employees' Compensation Appeals Board, page 526
- This includes classifying and marking; shaking out wet laundry; feeding into the flatwork ironer; catching, folding, and stacking ironed flatwork; folding roughdry laundry; sorting by identification number; and wrapping bundles.1993, Federal personnel manual system:, page 88
Having been been sawn, edged, trimmed, and dried, but not surfaced or dressed by planing.
- The dry lumber was pulled from the kiln and held in the roughdry shed for a day or two before unstacking.1959, Research Notes - Volume 173, page 2
- The minimum roughdry thickness of the standard yard board shall be not less than twenty-eight thirty-seconds of an inch, except that 20 percent of a shipment may be not less than twenty-seven thirty-seconds of an inch.1964, United States. Congress. House, Hearings - Volume 1, page 310

This includes looading, unloading, and operating controls of machines to wash, dye, starch, roughdry, or condition items for pressing.1993, Federal personnel manual system:, page 88:
My washerwoman, confound her for ironing off my shirt-buttons, says that she wears her clothes roughdry, because she can't afford to pay for both washing and ironing.2022, Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall:

Verb
third-person singular present	roughdries
present participle	roughdrying
past participle	roughdried
past	roughdried
Adjective
comparative	more roughdry
superlative	most roughdry

From rough + dry.

What does roughdry mean?: Roughdry means in laundry work, to dry without smoothing or ironing.
How do you use roughdry in a sentence?: This includes looading, unloading, and operating controls of machines to wash, dye, starch, roughdry, or condition items for pressing.
What part of speech is roughdry?: Roughdry can be a verb or an adjective.
What is the past tense of roughdry?: The past tense of roughdry is roughdried.

Adapted from Wiktionary: roughdry (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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