"…a lot more cut and dry"?
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Over the years, we've taken many self-appointed usage authorities to task for ignorant pronouncements presenting their personal reactions as facts of the standard language, or even as logical necessities. But everybody has similar reactions, and the point is not to deny the existence of usage conventions, or to pretend that you don't ever perceive something as a violation. As in all areas of cultural judgment, however, it's a good idea to examine the foundations of your responses, because sometimes it turns out that you're wrong about the facts or the logic.
I recently documented an experience of that general kind in a June 20 post "Incredulous, incredible, whatever…", where a usage that I perceived as a malapropism turned out to go back to Shakespeare.
This morning's example is even more surprising to me — "cut and dry" where I expected "cut and dried".
In an online video clip, Julia Jacobs explains the recent Sean Combs verdict — "Sean Combs Acquitted of Sex Trafficking but Found Guilty on Lesser Charges", NYT 7/2/2025:
Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who built a business empire around his personal brand, was convicted on Wednesday of transporting prostitutes to participate in his drug-fueled sex marathons, but acquitted of racketeering and sex trafficking, the most serious charges against him. Julia Jacobs, a New York Times culture reporter, explains the verdict.
At about 1:12 in the clip, she says [emphasis added]:
That charge is a lot more cut and dry, in that it has to do
with transporting
people over state lines
for the purposes of prostitution.
That triggered my usage alarm: "Gee, that's an interesting but illogical development. Dry as a participle parallel to cut? " (Much later in the process, I realized that cut and dry can be parallel adjectives…)
I had enough sense to look around, and found plenty of current examples. In fact, in the COCA corpus, there are 180 instances of "cut and dried" and 183 instances of "cut and dry".
The OED traces the modifier "cut and dry" back to 1643:
And the extended meaning back to 1684:
The "cut and dried" alternative has OED citations for the tobacco-leaf sense back to 1680, and for the "decided, settled, or prepared" sense back to 1664. So the two version have been in (free?) variation since the beginning — although I had managed to remain totally unaware of the "cut and dry" version until today.
In my defense, Google Ngrams shows that "cut and dried" had a more than 95% share in the 1940s, falling to around 2/3 in recent years:
Barbara Phillips Long said,
July 3, 2025 @ 10:18 am
As someone who has always used “cut and dried,” and winced at “cut and dry,” this is fascinating. I had no idea the idiom originated in the tobacco trade. I have always assumed — without investigation — that it likely came from processing fish (gutting, scaling, and cleaning fish, cutting it into fillets, and drying it for packing and shipment). Turns out my personal folk etymology was completely wrong. Huh.
Anubis Bard said,
July 3, 2025 @ 10:24 am
Fascinating. I've always assumed it was "cut and dry," though I can't say I ever gave it much thought one way or another. Growing up when I did in Lancaster County, PA, there was still a fair amount of tobacco farming going on among the Amish, but I didn't know that was the source of the idiom.
Andreas Johansson said,
July 3, 2025 @ 11:35 am
I want to say I've never encountered the "dry" version before, but it's probably at least as likely I have but un- or semiconsciously treated it as a mispronunciation or miswriting.