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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 32. The adjective phrase today is

  • high and dry. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here.

  • If someone is in a high-and-dry position or left high and dry....Yeah. Left is to

  • leave someone high drives probably the most common verb we use with it. If we

  • kind of turn it into almost like an idiom to leave someone high dry. But high

  • and dry is an adjective phrase by itself. that can be used with other verbs too. Okay.

  • So left high and dry. He or she is stranded or unsupported or left in a situation which

  • has little or no chance of improving from something. Then we could say you

  • know somebody was left high and dry or somebody is in sort of a high and dry

  • situation. Okay. Good. Let's continue. The origin of the phrase

  • goes back to the late 1700s early 1800s around that time. To refer to a ship that

  • ran aground. Yeah. You know when a ship goes too far in and it gets stuck in the

  • water, gets stuck in a sand bank or something like that. And it can't get out

  • or maybe it got damaged along some rocks that are near the coast that

  • ran aground and it ends up stranded or stuck there . Oh ran aground or was in a

  • dry dock , which of course implies that it is stuck or stranded. So this is the idea.

  • This is the origin of where the phrase came from. All right. Let's look we got

  • three examples here. Example number one. He walked out the door one day and left

  • his wife completely high and dry to take care of six children without an income.

  • Yeah. So in this case he probably even didn't give her a warning. He just disappeared

  • one day. Just left, just up and abandoned. So really leaving her high and dry. Okay.

  • Let's look at number two here. She just kicked me out of her car and left me

  • high and dry along the side of the highway in the middle of the night. And yeah,

  • maybe in the middle hardly any cars are going by. You're just walking

  • on the side of the highway. You don't know exactly where you are. You got to get

  • off an exit or something like that. Then we can say to leave somebody high and

  • dry or somebody's in a high-dry position. Yeah. And number three here. In

  • the movie "Castaway"... it's a little bit of an old movie now. Tom Hanks' character was

  • stuck high and dry. So he could be stuck high and dry somewhere, on a deserted

  • island. So an island where there was no people. Remember the plane crashed and he

  • came down. He was in some sort of an inflatable light boat lifeboat and

  • somehow it got to this island where nobody was living. Even in our modern

  • times, he was stuck there for three or four years. You know, according to the

  • story in the movie anyway, he was just ... he was really just deserted there or left

  • there high and dry. He was you know, he was stuck there high and dry. Anyway, I

  • hope you got it. I hope it was clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 32. The adjective phrase today is

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