Leave high and dry

The term leave high and dry means to leave someone without any help and little hope of receiving any help in the future.

YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast

Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.



English Idiom: Leave high and dry

This poor ship has been left high and dry, which means leaving someone without any help and little hope of receiving any assistance in the future.


A boat needs water to float, and the water seems to have gone away, leaving the ship in a challenging situation and without any support in sight.

Unfortunately, this ship is not alone.

People are in the same situation all the time.

Sometimes, a company will go bankrupt and leave its employees high and dry by not paying them.

Maybe you have made plans to do some significant gardening this weekend.

Included in your plans was assigning the heavy lifting to your husband.

Unfortunately for you, your darling has left you high and dry by going on a golfing trip to Okinawa with his buddies.

Either way, it’s never nice to be left in a difficult situation without help.


This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



Posted

in

by