cut-and-dried

or cut-and-dry

[ kuht-n-drahyd ]
See synonyms for cut-and-dried on Thesaurus.com
adjective
  1. prepared or settled in advance; not needing much thought or discussion: a cut-and-dried decision.

  2. lacking in originality or spontaneity; routine; boring: a lecture that was cut-and-dried.

Origin of cut-and-dried

1
First recorded in 1700–10

Words Nearby cut-and-dried

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use cut-and-dried in a sentence

  • The woman felt a certain fainting of purpose at the cut-and-dried programme presented in that dry manner by the dry old man.

    The Open Question | Elizabeth Robins
  • Once more she was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing, cut-and-dried thing.

  • It may be that our feelings will thus be more interesting than a cut-and-dried treatise of the land and its inhabitants.

  • The councils were no longer the orderly conferences of savants over cut-and-dried maps.

    Vikings of the Pacific | Agnes C. Laut
  • In such matters an ounce of personal experience is worth a pound of cut-and-dried theory.

Other Idioms and Phrases with cut-and-dried

cut-and-dried

Ready-made, predetermined and not changeable. For example, The procedure is not quite cut and dried—there's definitely room for improvisation. This expression originally alluded to herbs for sale in a shop, as opposed to fresh, growing herbs. [c. 1900]

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.