Hunting Down the Origin of “Home and Dry”

Hello,

This week’s Wordfoolery word hunt is with thanks to blog reader R. Ellrod who sent me the following query – “There’s an old Gerry Rafferty rock song called “Home and Dry,” a favorite of mine.  When I first heard it, eons ago, I had the impression that the title was a stock phrase of some sort.  But I don’t know where it comes from.  Is it another phrase the sea gave us? (since “dry” seems to suggest coming home from a sea voyage)”

I have to admit up front that I’m not an expert on the origins of phrases, although I do sometimes feature them. I find they’re often very difficult to track down and prone to controversy as a result thanks to spurious folk etymologies. This was proven to me by the large list of phrases I removed from my book “Words the Sea Gave Us” because, despite sounding nautical, they weren’t. In fact, nautical words and phrases are particularly prone to that trap.

Anyhow, with that said, let’s get started. My first stop on phrases is always the excellent site Phrases.org and it didn’t let me down. They reckon home and dry is an Australian phrase meaning to be safely home after achieving your objective. The earliest use of it they found in print was a 1910 Australian newspaper. There’s also a related phrase (same meaning) – home and hosed, this one first used in a Melbourne newspaper report of a golf tournament in 1948.

The idea is that you’ve finished your, possibly messy, job and you’re now at home, after a shower and in a dry set of clothes.

Home and dry

One source is never enough when it comes to phrases and this is where it get tricky as the sources don’t agree. Idiom Origins reckons home and dry is a late 1800s British English expression possibly related to finishing wet weather military operations, although they don’t provide any supporting proof on that idea.

The Australian National University School of Language and Linguistics provides a wonderfully entertaining and detailed list of Australian words and phrases (warning – you may disappear into that link for a while, it’s a good read – check out drop bears!) but sadly they don’t mention home and dry or home and hosed. That raises a question marks over the Australian origins.

Meanwhile the Collins Dictionary, based in the UK, says home and dry is British English while home and hosed is American English (the later I can believe as “hosed” isn’t really used for showering on this side of the pond).

It’s always interesting when everybody thinks somebody else invented a phrase. Who should we believe? Well, I tend towards Australian, possibly imported from Britain with settlers, until somebody can show me it in use in print earlier elsewhere.

As for the nautical link? Despite being similar in sound to high and dry (about boats out of the water for repairs and their crew being vulnerable as a result) I think this one doesn’t have nautical origins.

Can anybody out there provide any further information on this one? Don’t forget, if you’ve a word or phrase you’d like Wordfoolery to check out – drop me a comment or use the Nominate a Word page.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo 2021. Day One and I’m up to 2,500 words on “Words Christmas Gave Us” – watch this space!