English · Idiom Attested

dry as dust

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Very dull or boring.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

nhạt nhẽo hoặc buồn chán

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used American English

Examples

His tongue had not been cut out — it loomed thick and purple behind those savage teeth and the thick whiskers of severed whip — however his throat was dry as dust.

As a boy I was always taught to use a sod of turf as a foundation, so that the eggs would remain slightly damp, and to build a snug nest of hay on top of it -and the barn wall was knobbly, draughty and dry as dust.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Adapted from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30 via kaikki.org). Figurative class: Simile (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Common questions

What does “dry as dust” mean?

Very dull or boring.

Is “dry as dust” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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