Definition

1. Verb:
   • To make something or someone completely wet by pouring or immersing in liquid: To saturate thoroughly with a liquid, often implying a forceful or thorough soaking.
   • To force a liquid, especially medicine, down the throat of an animal: To administer a liquid, typically a dose of medicine, to an animal.
   • (Figurative) To fill or permeate something completely: To soak or saturate an abstract thing, such as an atmosphere or a place, with a particular quality.

Usage Examples

• Verb:
  • The sudden storm drenched all the picnic-goers. (The rain made the people completely wet.)
  • The farmer had to drench the sick sheep with a special medicine. (The farmer forced the sheep to swallow the medicine.)
  • The novel is drenched in a sense of melancholy. (The book is thoroughly permeated with sadness.)

Advanced Usage

• "to be drenched to the skin": to be so wet that one's clothes are soaked through to the skin.
  • We were drenched to the skin before we could find shelter.
• "to drench oneself in something": (figurative) to immerse oneself completely in an experience or feeling.
  • She drenched herself in the local culture during her travels.

Variants and Related Words

• Drenching (noun/adjective): The act of making something very wet, or something that causes this.
  • We got caught in a drenching downpour.
• Drencher (noun): (Informal) A very heavy fall of rain.
  • That was a real drencher of a storm.

Synonyms

• Soak: To make something very wet, often by leaving it in liquid.
• Saturate: To cause something to become thoroughly soaked or filled.
• Souse: To plunge something into liquid or pour liquid over it.
• Douse/Dowse: To pour a liquid over something; to extinguish with liquid.

Related Phrasal Verbs

(Note: "drench" is not commonly used with particles to form standard phrasal verbs. The action is typically expressed with prepositions like "in" or "with.")

Related Idioms

• "like a drowned rat": looking extremely wet and bedraggled, similar to being drenched.
  • He came in from the rain looking like a drowned rat.

Verb

1. cover with liquid; pour liquid onto
   • souse water on his hot face
2. permeate or impregnate
   • The war drenched the country in blood
3. force to drink
4. drench or submerge or be drenched or submerged
   • The tsunami swamped every boat in the harbor