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drown

Pronunciation: /dɹaʊn/

The English word “drown” has 5 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To die from suffocation while immersed in water or other fluid.
  2. To kill by suffocating in water or another liquid.
  3. To be flooded: to be inundated with or submerged in (literally) water or (figuratively) other things; to be overwhelmed.
  4. To inundate, submerge, overwhelm.
  5. To obscure, particularly amid an overwhelming volume of other items.

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'.…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.