in the green tree … in the dry

English

Etymology

From Luke 23:31, Koine Greek ὅτι εἰ ἐν τῷ ὑγρῷ ξύλῳ ταῦτα ποιοῦσιν, ἐν τῷ ξηρῷ τί γένηται (hóti ei en tôi hugrôi xúlōi taûta poioûsin, en tôi xērôi tí génētai), rendered “For if they do these things in a green tree [when the trees are green], what shall be done in the dry?” in the King James Version.

Prepositional phrase

in the green tree … in the dry

1. (idiomatic, dated) In a better situation as against a worse one; used chiefly in rhetorical questions to suggest that what is bad at one time will be worse in future.
   • 1865 September 11, J. C. Randolph, “[Letter to Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner]”, in Ira Berlin et al., editors, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, volume 1/2, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South, published 1993, →ISBN, pages 713–4:

     If this is seen in the green tree, what will it be in 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?

   • 1877 February 13, Matthew H. Carpenter, Electoral Count of 1877. Proceedings of the Electoral Commission and of the Two Houses of Congress […], published 1877, pages 266–7:

     […] disfranchisement was imposed upon 10,000 legal voters by a tribunal which had no jurisdiction to exclude a vote; if these things can be done in the green tree, what may we not expect to see in the dry?

   • 1910 November 30, George Laurenson, “Mr. Hine’s Charges”, in New Zealand: Parliamentary Debates. Third Session, Seventeenth Parliament […], volume 153, published 1910, page 1236, column 1:

     If you do that sort of thing in the green tree, what will you do in 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], volume 14, page 613:

     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 done in the green tree. Mr. Wallas’ article gives altogether too mild an impression of what is being done in the dry.

   • 1966, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, volume 1, page 106:

     They saw it as an ominous, a fatal precedent; for if these things were done in the green tree, what would be done in the dry, when the Whigs returned despite the king?