Meaning & use
dry period
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A stretch of time with little or no rainfall.
Grammar: Countable: a long dry period, two dry periods.
Patterns
- a dry period of something
After a long dry period, the river was almost empty.
Farmers hope the dry period ends before the planting season.
A short dry period let us finish the picnic without getting wet.
nouncountablefigurative
A time when someone has little success, income or creative output, or has none of something they usually have.
Grammar: Often figurative: a dry period in his career.
Patterns
- a dry period for someone
The striker went through a dry period without scoring.
The author blamed a creative dry period on stress.
The agency had a dry period of three months with no new clients.
Word forms
| plural | dry periods |
|---|
Common combinations
- a prolonged dry period
- A prolonged dry period left the lake shrinking.
- go through a dry period
- Every writer goes through a dry period now and then.
- a dry period in sales
- The firm survived a dry period in sales last winter.
- end a dry period
- A big contract ended the company's dry period.
Synonyms and how they differ
- drought
- Drought is stronger and implies a harmful shortage of rain, while dry period can be mild and short.
- dry spell
- Dry spell is almost identical and slightly more common in speech, especially for weather or sports.
- slump
- Slump is used for a decline in performance or economic activity, not for rain.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: dry period or dry spell?
dry period vs dry spell
Dry spell means almost the same thing but is a looser, more idiomatic way of saying it.
Practice
The striker has been in a ___ and has not scored in eight matches.
Choose one answer.
A dry period describes a stretch without success; a wet season is about rain, and the other options do not fit the meaning.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dry period”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.