Sailors aboard the USS Oak Hill conducting a dry run firefighting drill
8 May 2023
Dry run is an Americanism dating to the late nineteenth century usually referring to a rehearsal or practice run of some activity. But the phrase dry run has an older, etymologically unrelated sense referring to a waterless creek bed, an arroyo. This use dates to the late eighteenth century and even appears as a proper place name in some locations.
Wentworth and Flexner’s 1960 Dictionary of American Slang defines the other common uses of the phrase today:
dry run 1 Firing or shooting practice with blank or dummy ammunition. Army use. → 2 A rehearsal; any simulated action. 3 [taboo] Sexual intercourse during which a contraceptive is used. v.t. To subject someone or something to a dry run. 1953: “The V[eterans’] A[dministration] invited Lemanowicz in a few days early so the hospital staff of 27 could ‘dry run’ their equipment.” AP, Jan. 6.
The slang sense of dry run first arises in firefighting jargon, referring to training exercises where water is not used. We see an example of its antonym, wet run, in an announcement of a firefighting tournament in the Tacoma, Washington Territory Daily Ledger of 1 September 1886:
State Association Champion Hose Race—Open to all; wet run; distance, two hundred yards to hydrant.
And the next year we see a similar announcement, only using dry run this time, in upstate New York’s Watertown Herald of 25 June 1887:
No less than fifteen nor more than seventeen men to each company. Dry run, standing start; each team to be allowed one trial; cart to carry 350 feet of hose in 50 foot lengths: distance, 300 yards run; 200 yards to hydrant: attach and lay one line of hose 300 feet from hydrant; break coupling, and put on pipe; pipe and coupling to be 8 threads to the inch, with at least 3 full threads to couple and to be screwed up to shoulder or washer, ready for water.
It makes its way into US Army slang by the beginning of the World War II era. The October 1941 issue of the journal American Speech defines it thusly, and also includes its use as a verb:
DRY RUN. To practice; a dress rehearsal.
But a response to the American Speech definition appears in the February 1942 issue, where a commenter, based on “four months’ experience (June to October 1941) as a draftee private at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; and Bolling Field, D.C.,” says:
“DRY RUN (to practice; a dress rehearsal).” I never heard it used as a verb, or to mean a dress rehearsal. Originally a semi-official term for practice firing without ammunition, it is slang in other senses, such as a mail-call at which one receives no mail.
But the Oxford English Dictionary has a 1949 citation of its use as a verb, so it’s reasonable to assume that American Speech got it right and the lone commenter was speaking from limited experience. It was undoubtedly the WWII military use of dry run that brought the phrase to the tongues of millions of Americans.
The sexual sense appears by the mid 1950s. Green’s Dictionary of Slang defines dry run as follows:
1. an act of sexual intercourse using a contraceptive. […] 2. (US gay) sex without ejaculation; frottage.
The sexual sense appears in Evan Hunter’s 1954 novel The Blackboard Jungle. Green’s places this citation under its second definition, but while his use of dry run clearly refers to sex, exactly what sexual act Hunter intended dry run to refer to isn’t clear from the text:
He plays drums with Gillespie, West. He beats a wild skin. He beats a wine skin too. But you’ve been to Spain, haven’t you, West? A man of your wide experience. A man who knows what “knocked up” means, and “grind session.” You also know what planked means, don’t you? You know what a dry run is, huh boy? Or do you go for crime jargon, West? Is that your speed? You a heel and toe boy? A grifter? A fish? What are you, West? A con man? Come on, West.
Sources:
“Fireman’s Tournament.” Daily Ledger (Tacoma, Washington Territory, 1 September 1886, 5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Glossary of Army Slang.” American Speech, 16.3, October 1941, 163–69 at 165. JSTOR.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. dry run, n. in dry, adj.1.
“Hose & Foot Races!” Watertown Herald (New York), 25 June 1887. [Page 4, image 4. Pages are unnumbered and out of order in the database.] NYS Historic Newspapers.
Hunter, Evan. The Blackboard Jungle. Cambridge, Mass.: Robert Bentley, 1954, 162. Archive.org.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2022, s.v. dry run, n., dry run, v.
Wentworth, Harold, and Stuart Berg Flexner, eds. Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960, 165. Archive.org.
Wilson, Douglas E. “Remarks on ‘Glossary of Army Slang.’” American Speech, 17.1, February 1942, 67–68 at 68. JSTOR.
Photo credit: Michael Loggins, 2009. US Navy photo. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.