Live rock, wet bar, dry wall?

As a non-native of Englishspeaker, I understand most of the language, but there are some things I don’t get. I guess a bar could be considered wet, since liquids are involved, and walls should be dry, not wet, or moist or liquid, But that goes without saying, so why the adjective?
As for ‘live’ rock, and the others, my guess is that it’s a sort of qualifier, separating rock from live rock, bar from wet bar and wall from dry wall, but I can’t really get the nuances.

Unless you’re referring to something I don’t know about, the term drywall refers to a building product (gypsum board) that comes in panels. It is applied dry, as opposed to the traditional method of interior wall surfacing, plaster, which was applied wet.

I think wet bars are those that have plumbing, as opposed to a simple piece of furniture in your living room, although I agree it’s generally a redundant term.

Precisely.

drywall = plasterboard. It’s a building material, not a type of wall.

“live rock” means either rock music performed by a band on the spot, rather than pre-recorded, or a stone which is not yet dead.

Here’s a “built-in” dry bar.

Here’s a free-standing dry bar.

Wet bars do, indeed, have sinks.

Live rock is actually made up of living organisms. . .

Live rock is not rock in the usual sense. It’s coral used in aquariums.

Most of these terms enter the language as a means of distinguishing them from similar sounding words, or when a formerly unified term acquires new meanings.

The term guitar was once all that was needed, but now needs to be qualified as acoustic guitar, electric guitar, synth guitar, etc.

Bars were simply places to keep liquor until somebody added plumbing and separated them into dry bars and wet bars.

There are hundreds of words that this has happened to. When this happens they are called retronyms.

I’ve heard ‘living rock’ used in a context that did not seem to have any connection to coral. ‘Carved from the living rock of the Granit Mountains’ sort of thing.

I’ve always heard and used the term “wet bar” as meaning a bar that supplies alcohol. You wouldn’t use it for somewhere you’d expect to supply alcohol (such as a pub), but somewhere where it might not be certain, such as on board a pleasure boat, or at an on-site office Christmas party.

In the UK a drywall is an external wall, usually forming part of a field border that does not have mortar, instead the stones are laid on each other in a way that effectively interlocks them together.

This is a usefull way of constructing walls as it does not need all the hassle of obtaining an mixing mortar and moving it to where the building work is being done.

It has the advantage that walls can be added, modified or maintained with a lot less planning or scheduling, you can do just a little bit at a time, as and when it suits, whereas with mortar you hvae to use it within a certain time of mixing.

You will see these in many parts of the UK, especially in marginal upland farm areas, where these walls also have another purpose, they are also a useful place to gather up all the rocks from a field and usefully dispose of them.

Some of these walls are deceptively old, going back many hundreds of years, there are parts that can be traced back to the stone age, but these are usually just the lower layers and foundations.

These walls are also used by environmental scientists to monitor the ares, by mapping the lichen growth on them, as lichens can grow extremely slowly but are affected by such things as acid rain, and can store certain pollutants at the time of growth - which leads to a profile over time of the local area.

I believe you are thinking of a dry wall, or a dry stone wall, but not drywall. And I suspect the OP was thinking of drywall and not a dry wall. But hey…that’s why English is such a great language. More nits to pick than anyone else. More nuances, too.

Yes, English has that certain je ne sais quoi.

Live rock?

Not this?

That was my understanding too.

“There will be a wet bar at the office party” means you’ll be able to get a beer, rather than just fruit punch.

Also, “dry” is often used to mean without alcohol, as in a “dry town.”

You are correct if you are talking about a party, get together, or a town. However if you are talking about a piece of furniture or an feature of a house, you have to admit that your definition makes no sense. You can serve alcohol off of anything. If you put a couple of fifths on top of a cardboard box, would that make it a wet box? :confused: A wet bar is one that has plumbing installed.
A dry bar
Another one
Ten more
A wet bar in a B&B
A typical wet bar
More wet bar photos

In real estate, if I tell someone there is a bar in the rec room, that doesn’t imply any plumbing. A wet bar includes running water, a sink and a sewer connection. That’s why it’s wet.

I had a listing earlier this year with a 12-ft bar in the pool room, probably the largest residental bar I ever saw. I always pointed out to buyers that it could easily be made into a wet bar by connecting to the plumbing in the adjacent bathroom.

I have seen small, 3 ft wide, standalone bar structures you can buy to put in the corner of a living room. It used to be common in some neighborhoods, and they were often made of bamboo or faux-bamboo. They used ice buckets to make drinks or cool bottles, and they might have a small refrigerator nearby, but no flowing water connection. They were not wet bars no matter what brand of beer was served.

I’ve seen German words that just keep stacking adjectives and connecting them into a signle word until they are the width of a page. The one that I don’t remember was a noun that meant a telemarketer-in-the-middle-of-the-night-phone-call

People from two different English-speaking countries have noted the usage of “Wet bar” for serving alcohol, so clearly it isn’t only a bar with plumbing, and - shock horror - there is more than one usage in this English language of ours - and in the spirit of the SDMB, we’re letting the OP know about them all.

A bar is a bar is a bar. If I’m serving drinks from two planks of wood resting on milk crates, then it’s a bar. If those drinks have alcohol in them, then it’s a wet bar.

I personally have never heard this usage. In my experience they say one of the following:
“refreshments provided” (soft drinks only)
“open bar” (beer & liquor, free)
“cash bar” (beer & liquor for sale)