dry¹ v Cp DAE ~ v 1 'to cure (meat or fish) by expelling moisture' (1622-). To expose a split and gutted cod-fish to sun and wind as part of a curing process involving diminution of its natural moisture and corning by prior application of salt; cp MAKE, SAVE, SPREAD v.
   [1583] 1940 Gilbert's Voyages & Enterprises ii, 403 [Hayes' narrative] The Generall granted ... divers parcells of land lying by the water side, both in this harbor of S John, and elsewhere, which was to the owners a great commoditie, being thereby assured ... of grounds convenient to dresse and to drie their fish. 1620 WHITBOURNE 24 In some of those necessary houses or roomes they may put their fish when it is dried, which fish now standeth after such time it is dried, untill it is shipped, which is commonly above two moneths. [1663] 1963 YONGE 58 When well dried, it's made up into prest pile, where it sweats; that is, the salt sweats out, and corning, makes the fish look white. [1766] 1971 BANKS 134-5 They are Carried to the Last operation of Drying them which the English Do upon Standing flakes ... in some Places as high as twenty feet from the ground here they are Exposd with the open side to the sun & every night or when it is bad weather Piled up five or 6 on a heap. 1819 ANSPACH 435 The next day, or as soon as the weather permits, the fish is spread out on boughs in the open air to dry, head to tail, the open side being exposed to the sun. 1907 MILLAIS 158 After this they are spread out to dry in the sun on the fir-branched trestles or flakes. It takes about five fine days to dry a cod. 1937 Seafisheries ofNfld 49 The uncertainty as to the length of the voyage, and the time that the fish must remain under salt before it can be dried makes [it] almost essential [to heavily salt the Labrador catch]. [1952] 1965 PEACOCK (ed) i, 118 "Culling Fish": He stood to his post like a soldier on guard, / While Stewart kept saying its dried fine and hard, / 'Oh yes' he replied, pressing finger and thumb,/ 'In Jim Rose's day this would pass "number one."' 1953 Nfld Fish Develop Report 59 In good drying weather, the fish may be dried with about eight days' exposure to wind and sun; in poor weather, a month or even two months may be required. Sometimes a quantity of fish has to be carried over the winter and finished the following spring. 1954 INNIS 486 [In the sixteenth century] in place of the Spanish, who made their fish 'all wet and do drie it when they come home,' the English and French dried it in the New World and carried it to Spain... The fishing industry in Newfoundland provided a new frontier; and in its development, with the increase in ships, seamen, and trade, it broke the rigid chains of centralized control.

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