in the green tree … in the dry

Meaning: (idiomatic,dated)In a better situation as against a worse one;used chiefly inrhetorical questionsto suggest that the current unfavorable situation will worsen in the future.Synonym:(clipping)in the green tree1865September 11, J. C. Randolph, “[Letter to Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner]”, in Ira Berlinet al., editors,Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, volume 1/2,The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South, published1993,→ISBN,pages713–4:If this is seenin the green tree, what will it bein the dry? If this is so apparent now when the earth is loaded with her spontaneous fruits; what will it be when winter shall find them unprovided with the necessaries of life?1877February 13,Matthew H. Carpenter,Electoral Count of 1877. Proceedings of the Electoral Commission and of the Two Houses of Congress[…], published1877,pages266–7:[…]disfranchisement was imposed upon 10,000 legal voters by a tribunal which had no jurisdiction to exclude a vote; if these things can be donein the green tree, what may we not expect to seein the dry?1910November 30,George Laurenson, “Mr. Hine’s Charges”, inNew Zealand: Parliamentary Debates. Third Session, Seventeenth Parliament[…], volume153, published1910,page1236, column 1:If you do that sort of thingin the green tree, what will you doin the dry? When the honourable member does it to members who support the Prime Minister, what will he do to members of his own party?1920,The New Statesman‎[1], volume14, page613:His case, though never called, was kept in suspense for more than a year, and the dozen Italian workmen, arrested with him, too poor and friendliess to raise the exorbitant bail, remained in prison all that time. These things, and worse, were donein the green tree. Mr. Wallas’ article gives altogether too mild an impression of what is being donein the dry.1966,Owen Chadwick,The Victorian Church, volume 1,page106:They saw it as an ominous, a fatal precedent; for if these things were donein the green tree, what would be donein the dry, when the Whigs returned despite the king?

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