Definition of DROWN

drown

Verb

Verb Forms: drowned, drowning, drowns

  • To die or kill by submersion in water; to overwhelm.
  • cover completely or make imperceptible
    • "I was drowned in work"
    • "The noise drowned out her speech"
  • get rid of as if by submerging
    • "She drowned her trouble in alcohol"
  • die from being submerged in water, getting water into the lungs, and asphyxiating
    • "The child drowned in the lake"
  • kill by submerging in water
    • "He drowned the kittens"
  • be covered with or submerged in a liquid
  • To die from suffocation while immersed in water or other fluid.
  • To kill by suffocating in water or another liquid.
  • To be flooded: to be inundated with or submerged in (literally) water or (figuratively) other things; to be overwhelmed.
  • To inundate, submerge, overwhelm.
  • To obscure, particularly amid an overwhelming volume of other items.

Examples

  • He drowns his sorrows in buckets of chocolate ice cream.
  • He tried to drown his opponent’s score with a strategic triple-word play.
  • The answers intelligence services seek are often drowned in the flood of information they can now gather.
  • The car thief fought with an officer and tried to drown a police dog before being shot while escaping.
  • We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom.
  • When I was a baby, I nearly drowned in the bathtub.

Origin / 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.

Scrabble Score: 9

drown: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
drown: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
drown: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 10

drown: valid Words With Friends Word