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Drown
Definitions
- 1 A surname.
- 1 To die from suffocation while immersed in water or other fluid. intransitive
"When I was a baby, I nearly drowned in the bathtub."
- 2 die from being submerged in water, getting water into the lungs, and asphyxiating wordnet
- 3 To kill by suffocating in water or another liquid. transitive
"The car thief fought with an officer and tried to drown a police dog before being shot while escaping."
- 4 get rid of as if by submerging wordnet
- 5 To be flooded: to be inundated with or submerged in (literally) water or (figuratively) other things; to be overwhelmed. intransitive
"We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom."
Show 6 more definitions
- 6 kill by submerging in water wordnet
- 7 To inundate, submerge, overwhelm. figuratively, transitive
"He drowns his sorrows in buckets of chocolate ice cream."
- 8 cover completely or make imperceptible wordnet
- 9 To obscure, particularly amid an overwhelming volume of other items. figuratively, transitive
"The answers intelligence services seek are often drowned in the flood of information they can now gather."
- 10 be in danger of dying from submersion in a liquid and asphyxiation wordnet
- 11 be covered with or submerged in a liquid wordnet
Etymology
From Middle English drownen, drounen, drunen (“to drown”), of obscure and uncertain origin. The OED suggests an unattested Old English form *drūnian. Harper 2001 points to Old English druncnian, ġedruncnian (> Middle English drunknen, dronknen (“to drown”)), "probably influenced" by Old Norse drukkna (cf. Icelandic drukkna, Danish drukne (“to drown”)). Funk & Wagnall's has 'of uncertain origin'. It has been theorised (see e.g. ODS) that it may represent a direct loan of Old Norse drukkna, but this is described by the OED as being "on phonetic and other grounds [...] highly improbable", unless one considers the possibility of an unattested variant in Old Norse *drunkna.
See also for "drown"
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