Timeline for Origin of the saying 'all wet'

6 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Sep 2, 2021 at 17:23	comment	added	Sven Yargs		Another possibility—and that I haven't investigated more than cursorily—is that "[You're] all wet" arose in connection with the earlier slang expression "Dry up!'—used in the sense of "Stop complaining [or crying or talking]," which had been in use in the United States at least since the early 1850s. I did find an instance from a March 18, 1917 article in the New York Sun in which a lion tells a hippopotamus (who has just emerged from a pool of water and urging the other animals not to forget his tank car when they move the animal cars on to the next town), "Dry up, now, yer all wet!"
Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40	history	edited	CommunityBot		Commonmark migration
Jan 18, 2018 at 17:55	comment	added	jcolebrand		Some thoughts for fun: you can't light a candle with a wet wick, likewise explode wet gunpowder. There is a story about a man who wanted to stay dry in a rainstorm and stood beneath a tree till the water soaked through the above branches, but knew he would be okay for getting to the next tree because only his tree was wet, the others must surely still be dry underneath. -- I'm sure those are not directly related to this but they could be.
Nov 21, 2017 at 19:23	history	edited	Sven Yargs	CC BY-SA 3.0	Added examples from 1918 and 1925, and made some minor copyediting revisions.
Apr 12, 2015 at 8:51	vote	accept	CommunityBot
Apr 12, 2015 at 8:45	history	answered	Sven Yargs	CC BY-SA 3.0