Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
👔 Needs no ironing 🧺 To hang to dry
drip-dry

drip-dry

1 3.7
Able to dry when hung up after washing without needing ironing
  • adjective
  • /drɪp draɪ/
translation icon : de secado rápido
  • I hope your suit is drip-dry.
  • drip-dry shirt

Examples

  • It's a drip-dry.

    Charade (1963)

  • In a drip-dry shirt, p55 dress, and Nikes, with a handsome face and clipped white monkish hair.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • (n22) Food that is processed, packaged, advertised, and correspondingly more expensive, and drip-dry shirts, which may be forced on consumers who prefer to iron themselves but can no longer find cheaper shirts, are two additional examples.

    Academic text (1998)

  • My new shirt is drip-dry, so I can just hang it up after washing without needing to iron it.

  • These drip-dry fabric pants are perfect for traveling since they dry quickly when hung up.

  • I love my drip-dry clothes because they save me time on laundry days.

Synonyms

permanent-press
vsdrip-dry
1 4.6

Fabric made to stay smooth after washing and not need ironing

dries by hanging and does not refer to special fabric treatment
wash-and-wear
vsdrip-dry
3.9

Cloth that does not need ironing after it is washed

dries when hung up and emphasizes drying method rather than quick drying
ironless
vsdrip-dry
3.4

Clothes that do not need ironing to stay smooth

specifies drying by hanging rather than focusing only on smoothness

How Easy

drip-dry
1 3.7

Surface Forms

drip-dry positive

Morphology

drip-dry = drip + dry (transparent) = drip + dry

The meaning is directly given by 'drip' + 'dry' (dry by dripping/hanging), which B1 learners can infer.

Etymology

Drip-dry comes from putting together drip ('let water fall in drops') and dry ('not wet'), so it describes clothes you can hang up and leave while the water drips away. That's why drip-dry fabrics do not need ironing.