What does left high and dry mean?

Question

What does left high and dry mean?

Answer 1

marooned, stranded, left helpless, abandoned. Like a boat.

Answer 2

Abandoned.

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Answer 3

This usulay relates to a sexual experiance when either male or female has built up a very erotic moment (heavy petting) and just at the moment either partner has wanted sexual intercorse the other has refused   hence the meaning left high and dry !!.

Ste .

Answer 4

Likely it hearkens back to maritime (seafaring) terms.

If you run a boat or ship up onto a sand bar, and the tide goes out, the vessel is above the water line, high and dry.  This is obviously a very undesirable place for a waterborne vehicle to be.  If it's not in the water, it's stranded, and the higher above the water it is, the worse is its predicament.

Answer 5

A beached ship/boat. You're in a situation which you are incapable of escaping. Up the creek without a paddle.

Answer 6

Stranded, as in They walked out on the party, leaving me high and dry. This expression originally alluded to a ship that had run aground or was in dry dock. Its figurative use dates from the late 1800s.

http://www.answers.com/topic/the-maggie

leave somebody high and dry

   1. (idiomatic) To abandon somebody; to stop providing assistance at a crucial moment.

          He just walked out and left her high and dry with two kids and a mortgage.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/high_and_d...

1  : being out of reach of the current or tide or out of the water  

2  : being in a helpless or abandoned position  

http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/d...

high and dry

a. (of a ship) grounded so as to be entirely above water at low tide.

b. in a deprived or distressing situation; deserted; stranded: We missed the last bus and were left high and dry.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q...

Answer 7

It is an English idiom and comes originally from the practice of abandoning an old, and no longer useful, wooden boat stranded above the high water line where her timbers would dry out, weather, and rot.

It signifies someone or something having been unexpectedly abandoned at a crucial moment or important time, like for example, an expectant bride jilted on her wedding day.

Answer 8

Left somewhere you don't know with no way home.

Answer 9

The other answers are great, I just wanted to add that a lot of people use this phrase when they are talking about a spouse or mate that broke up with them and then left them with no one to talk to or no money to take care of things, etc.  I hear that phrase the most when people are talking about their ex-spouses having left and left them with no money.