dryer
Pluraldryers
Pluraldryers
- 1Short for clothes dryer.
She tossed the damp sheets into the dryer before dinner.
Our building's basement has a coin-operated dryer next to the washer.
Note
The everyday meaning, and the one most often intended when the word stands alone. Clothes dryer or tumble dryer is clipped to its last word, and the appliance that tumbles laundry in a heated drum keeps the whole name. Context rarely needs the longer form: in a laundry room, next to the washer, a dryer is simply this machine, and the plural is dryers.
- 2A person or thing that dries; any device or material used to remove water or humidity, such as a desiccant.
The industrial dryer removed nearly all the moisture from the freshly milled lumber.
Silica gel packets act as dryers, soaking up humidity inside sealed boxes.
Similardesiccant
Note
Here is the agent noun the other nouns grow from: Middle English driere or dreyere, "one who dries," built from dry plus the -er that names a doer. It covers natural forces as well as plant. The sun and a northwesterly wind are great driers of the earth, and a grain dryer can be a whole wooden tower. The spelling drier serves this sense too, while the comparative "more dry" shares the spelling through a different -er.
- 3Comparative of dry.
The second batch of cookies came out dryer than the first.
Inland regions are noticeably dryer than the humid shoreline.
Note
A different word that happens to look like the nouns. It is dry plus the comparative -er, not the agent suffix behind the "one who dries" noun. It follows every sense of dry, so soil, a well, or a county without alcohol can each be dryer than another. The form is marked as US usage. Drier is the other spelling of the same comparative and avoids any clash with the appliance.
- 4A catalyst that promotes the drying of paints and varnishes through oxidative crosslinking.
The restorer stirred a few drops of dryer into the linseed-based paint.
Too much dryer can make a varnish film brittle and prone to cracking.
Similarsiccative
Less common meaning
- 5Short for hair dryer.
After her shower, she reached for the dryer to fix her curls.
The stylist used a powerful dryer to smooth every client's hair.
Note
A rare clipping, because the laundry appliance has already claimed the bare word. Hair dryer itself names two devices: the handheld blower and the hood a salon client sits under. Either can be shortened to dryer only when the setting makes it plain, such as a stylist's chair or a bathroom mirror. Anywhere else, say hair dryer in full.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English driere, dreyere ("one who dries"), formed from "dry" plus the agent-noun suffix "-er".
Formed from "dry" plus the comparative suffix "-er".