idioms only: "dry" and "dried"

GE: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Tom Bloor | November 9th, 2001

I have always been familiar with the expression "cut and dried", meaning something like straightforward or already worked out, but I don't recall noticing "cut and dry" until it came up (at some distance in time) from two different participants on this list. I looked it up in the Shorter Oxford and found "cut and dry" given as an alternative to "cut and dried", but in parentheses, which might suggest that it is less frequent. I wonder if there is a regional factor in the variation here. The dictionary doesn't say that there is. Obviously, "dry" and "dried" are frequently interchangeable, but idioms of this kind are not always open to variation, eg people say "ready, willing and able" but I don't think the variants "available, willing and able" or "ready, willing and competent" trip so lightly off the tongue (though of course they are perfectly good English). How about "hell and flood" for "hell and high water". Is "an open and closed case" a possible variant of "an open and shut case"?

It shows how careful you have to be in correcting students' production. After many decades of pondering such issues, I would have thought "cut and dry" was not an English idiom if the source had been a non-native speaker, but I would have been wrong.

Tom Bloor

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Pinkie | November 10th, 2001

Hi Tom-

I think I'd say "cut and dry" - like James in Japan, as I discover from a search of old posts to this list!

Here's something similar: I've always said "common-old-garden", I think probably because my mother says it a lot, and I've only recently realised that it should be "common-or-garden" [OED2 - passing into adj, in the slang phr common or garden, a jocular substitute for 'common', 'ordinary' 1657 W Coles Adam in Eden xxix 59 But the Common or Garden Nightshade is not dangerous 1892 Autobiog Eng Gamekeeper (J Wilkins) 67 It was as large as a common - or garden - hen. 1896 Daily News 16 Oct 3/4 Such common or garden proceedings not being to the taste of Noa].

But- I did a search for "common old garden" on Altavista, and got a fair few hits, including...

a) Mumps is considered as a common old garden infection that you may have had or seen someone with;

b) But common old garden string, though less versatile in its range, provides some as well;

c) It all started when Reg Vitnell split up with his girlfriend, Rachel Holbrook, late last year. It was not your common old garden-variety bust-up.

Though having learnt the "uncorrupted" version, I certainly prefer it: lovely origin!

In this connection, I recently came across a lovely insult: "this mediocre, listless, garden-variety bongwit". The lexeme "garden-variety" gets no non-horticultural hits in the British-English corpora at the Cobuild Free Demo site, versus 10 such hits in the considerably smaller American-English corpus. Conversely, "common-or-garden" gets 14 hits in Brit English versus none in Am English.

[By the way: "cut and dried" is more frequent than "cut and dry" in the Cobuild corpora, with no evident difference between Am and Brit].

So there you go - bet this'll be useful for everyone's classes!

Pinkie
Spain

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | James Hobbs | November 10th, 2001

Reading Tom's post I was thinking to myself "Yes, 'dried' sounds more natural". It was only after reading Pinkie's post that I realized that I'm the one who wrote 'cut and dry'! Just goes to prove the point that how we use language is not necessarily the same as how we THINK we use language. As for the regional factor, I spent the first 18 years of my life in Leeds but I don't know whether that's got anything to do with it.

James

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Colin Graham | November 18th, 2001

I was just re-reading the mails about "cut and dry" vs "cut and dried". I wonder if there is some aspect of ergativity or change of state that is being missed. "Cut and dry" to me would imply a statement of the facts as they are now, whereas "cut and dried" may imply a knowledge of an earlier state when things had not been cut and had not been dried. The difference between the two being less noticeable because the past participle of cut is the same as the adjectival form, whereas dry is adjectival but dried is participle in form. Just a thought!

Maybe post-GE assignment trauma!

Colin Graham

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Tom Bloor | November 24th, 2001

Colin-

Your comments (below) on "dry" versus "dried" are perceptive (though I am not sure that anything in the prior discussion involved anyone missing this point; it just wasn't mentioned). As you suggest, "dried" implies that there has been a change of state from non-dry to dry whereas "dry" simply indicates the state, free of any implications of change though not necessarily ruling them out. As you also say, "cut" is a potentially ambiguous form because it might be seen as past participle or adjective: "The grass was cut with a scythe"; "the grass was cut and dry". Most grammars would support this, but whether "cut" is best perceived as a straightforward adjective is open to dispute, as I'll try to show.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that adjectives and past participles - unlike most distinct word classes - can be conjoined (which reinforces the arguments of those who say that they are not entirely distinct). A key issue here is the distinction between stative and dynamic participles. A few grammarians have argued for treating all past participles as adjectives, hence seeing passives as merely "be" + ADJ, but this sacrifices the possibility of distinguishing the stative and dynamic distinction. This can be captured by a fuzzier grammar that sees some instances of past participles as (more) adjectival and others as (more) verbal.

I would suggest that "cut and dried" is not substantially different from "cut and dry" in terms of the stative/dynamic dichotomy, because both lexical items express a state rather than a dynamic process. True, empirically, "dried" suggests that a process of drying has taken place, and "dry" does not since the substance may have been dry to begin with. Moreover, our world knowledge tells us that something that is "cut" must have undergone a process of being cut. However, in the sense in which the expression is idiomatically used (to mean "complete", "settled", "no longer open to dispute", etc) it is the STATE that is salient for both "cut" and "dried", and the process which led to this state is not salient. In a truly dynamic use, we would have to use "dried" and not "dry": e.g. "First the grass was cut with a scythe and then it was dried in the sun." This is Material process in Halliday's clause-as-representation terms, and "cut" and "dried" are past participles in a passive verb complex. But in the idiomatic usage the sense is of a static situation ("cut and dried/dry" is Attribute in a Relational clause - past participles but more adjectival than verbal). Therefore, "cut and dry" and "cut and dried" are grammatically interchangeable.

Best

Tom Bloor

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Raymond | November 25th, 2001

It might be worth looking at different corpora for some solutions to this puzzle. I looked at the sample search in BNC and found only four instances for cut and dry, and 38 for cut and dried. Not all the uses are metaphorical: there are literal references to horticulture, agriculture and (yes) hairdressing.

Cobuild Condordance sampler offered no instances of cut and dry and only a dozen for cut and dried - again not all metaphorical. You'll be glad to know that- "Papa delivers freshly rolled, cut and dried pasta right into your home".

The final statement below that "cut and dried" and "cut and dry" are grammatically interchangeable also puzzled me a little (since I haven't had the benefit of GE). What about if one were to add an intensifier (?) such as *very? Would that change the grammatical perception a little? Very dry seems acceptable, but very dried? And what about very cut?

How useful (and analytically reliable) is it to break down an idiom into its component parts either lexically or grammatically?

Raymond Sheehan

Re: Idioms Only: "Dry" and "Dried" | Dominic Marini | November 26th, 2001

Is it possible that the "cut and dry" "cut and dried" issue hinges on non-academic points.

1) The final "d" in dried is unstressed so the sound of dry and dried is only slightly different.

2) Most people have no idea what the origin of the expression is, where it came from, or could come from or what is being cut up and dried.

3) So, because of 1) (almost the same sound) and 2) (no clue about what they are saying) when someone says or writes dry in place of dried it is just an accident and they person who said it and their audience have no idea that anything is amiss.

Dominic Marini