dry run

• dry-run

From dry (“impotent; harmless”) +‎ run. First attested in print in 1941, but apparently much older in spoken English.^[1]

• Audio (General Australian):

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dry run (plural dry runs)

1. (idiomatic) A practice or rehearsal; especially, one that goes through all the motions of a physical process but without the raw material or workpiece present.

   Synonym: dummy run

   Hypernyms: run; practice; rehearsal

   Coordinate terms: dress rehearsal, run-through, runthrough, walkthrough, walk-through

   They did a dry run of the demonstration before showing it to the CEO.

   When the dry run mode of a machine tool control is on, the machine can move rapidly because it is cutting only air, not metal. The operator can do a dry run and verify that the motions look correct.

   • 1970, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, chapter 19, in The Changeling, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, →OCLC; republished Guildford, Surrey: The Lutterworth Press, 1976, →ISBN, page 179:

     Next Mr. Gregory went on to make a big thing out of the fact that he had caught them climbing "into" the school grounds not long before. He didn't exactly say so, but it was plain that he felt he had interrupted some kind of dry run—a training exercise for a crime in the planning.

   • 2001 October, Warren Harris, “Just who is this guy anyway?”, in Back Numbers‎^[1], number 1, page 1:

     John seems to think I will have enough to say of interest to the membership to fill my minimum number of pages. I understand that some waitlisters have contributed pages before becoming full members and this seems like a good idea to me. This way I can make a dry run at putting together my contributions each mailing without worrying about having to meet minac.

• run dry