all wet en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Meanings
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(literally, not-comparable) Thoroughly soaked; drenched.
The persons you meet inside a theatre are all wet, and the actors act as if the rain had taken all the fire out of them, and they had not had time to get a fresh supply.
1853, The Illustrated London Magazine:1805: Journal of William Clark Wind Shifted about to the S. W. and blew hard accompanied with hard rain. rained all the last night we are all wet our bedding and stores are also wet, we haveing nothing which is Sufficient to keep ourselves bedding or Stores dry
1972: Trends in long-term care: hearings, ninety-first Congress My mother has long hair. They rubbed a towel over it to get the drippings. They combed it out, and it was sopping wet. Then they braided it, and put her to bed with a wet head. The pillow was all wet and her sheet was all wet.
When I came home, I found a common-looking person, all wet and muddy.
1852, Charles Dickens, chapter 59, in Bleak House:
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(idiomatic, not-comparable) Utterly incorrect; erroneous; uninformed.
The lull gave Johnson a chance to show such critics as Canada's Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright that they were all wet in arguing that a halt in the bombing might open the way to negotiations.
1965 May 28, “The Lull That Lapsed”, in Time:If you think I withheld the ransom for the glory of France, you're all wet.
1966, Robert Hogan, Saint Jane:...you're all wet, calling me out on that close play at second base!
1931, U.S. Army Recruiting News:The he'll report back to Rita that she's all wet, on account I can't possibly be interested in you when I'm carrying the torch for him, see?
1935, Liberty, volume xii:
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(idiomatic, not-comparable) Deliberately and grotesquely untruthful.
They've figured out she's a sort of a kind of Joan of Arc. I think she's all wet, and it burns me up to see such a grand person as Ash Banner fall for that stuff!
1940, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, Of Human Kindness:
Translations (5)
fr faux (utterly incorrect) · fr erroné (utterly incorrect) · fi pihalla (utterly incorrect) · fi läpimärkä (thoroughly soaked) · fr trempé (thoroughly soaked)