Meaning
Stranded, helpless, or abandoned, usually through someone else's actions or through changed circumstances. Originally of a ship grounded above the waterline with the tide fully gone, the phrase is now almost always used figuratively of people or plans. Nearly always figurative today and typically passive or past-participial (was left high and dry); it stresses abandonment by a receding tide of support rather than simple failure. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A picture from the tidal shore: a vessel driven aground and left perched above the waterline when the sea withdrew - high up on the strand and dry, because the water had been gone long enough for the hull to dry out, meaning there would be no quick refloating. The OED's earliest literal citation is Alexander Hamilton's 1727 New Account of the East Indies, describing a ship found high and dry in the morning after a violent storm; The Times of London used it in August 1796 of a Russian frigate left nearly high and dry below the Nore once the tide ebbed. The figurative sense, stranded by the ebb of events, the OED dates to 1831, when an American magazine wrote that the tide of the multitude had gone down and left the theatre high and dry; Dickens carried the usage into the mainstream in Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), where a character is left high and dry without a leg to stand upon.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- high-and-dry (adjective)
- leave someone high and dry
- left high and dry
Usage Examples
- When the main sponsor pulled out overnight, the festival committee was left high and dry mid-build.
- The ebbing tide left the fishing boat high and dry on the mudflats until the next spring tide returned.
- Halfway through the data migration the vendor vanished, leaving our small IT team high and dry.