Words related to dry
verbal suffix for Latin verbs in -are, identical with -ate (1). Old English commonly made verbs from adjectives by adding a verbal ending to the word (such as gnornian "be sad, mourn," gnorn "sad, depressed"), but as the inflections wore off English words in late Old and early Middle English, there came to be no difference between the adjective and the verb in dry, empty, warm, etc. Thus accustomed to the identity of adjectival and verbal forms of a word, the English, when they began to expand their Latin-based vocabulary after c. 1500, simply made verbs from Latin past-participial adjectives without changing their form (such as aggravate, substantiate) and it became the custom that Latin verbs were Englished from their past participle stems.
Middle English dreinen, from Old English dreahnian "to draw off gradually, as a liquid; remove by degrees; strain out," from Proto-Germanic *dreug-, source of drought, dry, giving the English word originally a sense of "to make dry." Figurative meaning of "exhaust" is attested from 1650s. Intransitive sense of "to flow off gradually" is from 1580s. Related: Drained; draining.
Old English drugaþ, drugoþ "continuous dry weather injurious to vegetation, dryness," from Proto-Germanic *drugothaz, from Germanic root *dreug- "dry" with *-itho, Germanic suffix for forming abstract nouns. See dry (adj.) + -th (2), and compare high/height, etc. Drouth was a Middle English variant continued in Scottish and northern English dialect and in poetry.
late 15c. (early 14c. as a surname, Dryere; Alic le Dreyster is attested from 1292) "one who dries and bleaches cloth," agent noun from dry (v.). As "that which dries or is used in drying," 1520s. Dryer was used of machines from 1848 (drying-machine is by 1819).
