All wet is slang expression (mainly AmE) meaning:
entirely mistaken. (TFD)
All wet: The Phrase Finder, referring to OED, suggests that its first usage was:
- "c. all wet: mistaken, completely wrong. orig. and chiefly U.S.
1923 N.Y. Times 9 Sept. VII. 2/1 All wet, all wrong. 1931 Kansas City Times 29 Aug., Alfalfa Bill Murray may be 'all wet' in his state-line bridge and oil production controversies.
But what is the origin of wet meaning wrong?
Best Answer
The first dictionary mention of all wet that I've found is from Wentworth & Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (1960), which has this unsourced entry:
Chapman & Kipfer, Dictionary of American Slang, third edition (1995), has an even shorter entry, also unsourced:
The earliest discussion of the phrase in a Google Books match appears in John Alberti, "Weathering the Weather," in The Re-Ly-On Bottler: A Magazine of Ideas and Ideals for the Bottling Trade (June 1924):
By 1925, the expression was well enough established in U.S. popular culture that humorists could use it as a punchline. From "Old Stuff," a joke originally published in Life magazine, reprinted in the DeKalb [Illinois] Daily Chronicle (November 13, 1925):
Going back to 1918, we have this instance from Arthur ("Bugs") Baer, "Keeping the Wolf Away From the Yale Lock," in the [New York] Evening World (December 14, 1918):
It seems clear that "all wet" is a choice element in the latest slang, circa 1918, along with hep, bunk, cinch, jazzboed, wiff, hubbo, and such kindred terms (noted elsewhere in Bugs's article) as "the darb," "the grand razz," "you buzzed it," kerflapped, and zapps.
Another early occurrence (with a different implied sense of "all wet") appears in David Lustig, La Vellma's Vaudeville Budget for Magicians, Mind Readers, and Ventriloquists (1921), in the context of an extended bit of comedic patter to accompany the "Wine and Water" trick, where the magician changes a glass of wine successively into a glass of water, a glass of darker wine, a glass of milk, a glass of whiskey and finally a glass of water again:
Here I suspect that the phrase "he's all wet" may be intended to signify "he's drunk"—and it isn't hard to imagine a progression from telling a drunk who is being loud and unreasonable, "You're all wet!" and telling a sober blowhard who is being loud and unreasonable, "You're all wet."
In that regard I note that Wentworth & Flexner have this entry for wet as a stand-alone slang word:
Another possible influence on the emergence of "all wet" is the term "wet blanket," which Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition (2013) says dates to the early nineteenth century:
Still, Alberti's argument in the June 1924 Re-Ly-On Bottler that the phrase "all wet" alludes to the expression "doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain" is appealing, too.