A dry run is a practice or testing for an event, often before a performance or military exercise. It can also refer to a dress rehearsal or trial without an audience or missing key elements. The term may have originated from firefighters demonstrating their skills without using water. Military personnel use dry runs for hands-on exercises without using real ammunition.
A dry run is most simply defined as practice, practice, or testing for an event. In many cases, it refers to practice before a performance, going through all the action but with one element missing. The term is also commonly used in military procedures and the same basic principle applies in that scenario. The origins of this idiom are not entirely clear, but it may have started with firefighters demonstrating their skills in public functions in the late 19th century.
To most people, the term dry racing is synonymous with dress rehearsal or trial. For example, a show’s dress rehearsal follows all the motions of the show, including sets, costumes, and staging, but lacks the audience, making it a dry run. This can also be true for a test run of an experiment in which most of the experiment’s actions are performed but not all of the procedure is performed. Another meaning refers to emergency services that receive a call and answer it, but provide no actual help because the call becomes invalid before they arrive. In this case, emergency personnel are going through all the motions of a call without the element of following up and giving help.
Military environments are another place where the term dry run is used and has its own specific meaning. Military personnel sometimes have hands-on exercises. During these learning exercises, using real ammunition would obviously be quite risky, so they are performed without using real ammunition. This is the practice for a real event that is missing a key element and is therefore referred to as a dry run.
In the late 19th century, it was common for firefighters and hydrant companies to put on shows, showcasing their racing and firefighting skills, at fairs or other public events. For some of these demonstrations, firefighters would run hoses across a pathway or up stairways and act as if they were putting out a fire but using no water, hence the name, dry running. Conversely, these same drills were sometimes done with water and were then called wet runs.
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