all wet
11
9.3
- idiom
- Archaic
:
equivocado
- Now, Sir Gawain, it seems you are all wet.
- get all wet
- all wet right now
- idea that's all wet
For a long time we used to think the moon was completely dry, but now we know that hypothesis is all wet.
- For a long time we used to think the moon was completely dry, but now we know that hypothesis is all wet.
Examples
-
I knew that McNamara was intelligent, but I was sure that he was all wet about Egan.
Fiction book (1995) -
Yeah, I was all wet about your idea, man...
Fiction book (1994) -
Many people thought his plan was sound, but I believed he was all wet in his judgments.
-
Her argument was based on flawed assumptions, which made it clear that she was all wet about the issue.
-
Despite his confidence, everyone knew he was all wet when it came to understanding the project requirements.
Synonyms
129
4.6
Shows wrong ideas or bad judgment
1
6.3
An action or decision made without careful thought that causes problems
Antonyms
How Wrong
Surface Forms
Morphology
all + wet
Although 'all' can mean 'completely', the constituent 'wet' (covered with water) gives no obvious cue to the meaning 'completely wrong'; the connection is idiomatic rather than compositional. The phrase is colloquial and metaphorical with no predictable cross‑linguistic mapping, so an average B1 learner who knows the words but has not seen the expression would not infer its idiomatic sense.
Etymology
All wet may come from the image of something completely soaked and useless, with everything wet, like a match that is too wet to light. So when people say an idea is all wet, they mean it is 'completely wrong'.