drown

verb

DROWN/dɹaʊn/

5 meanings of drown

1
verbintransitive
To die from suffocation as a result of being immersed in water or another fluid.
Several sailors drowned when the ferry capsized in heavy seas.
Even strong swimmers can drown in cold, rough water.
Note
The dying sense, where the person in the water is the subject: she drowned, not she was drowned. Its origin is obscure. One proposed ancestor is Old English druncnian, which became Middle English drunknen, perhaps nudged by Old Norse drukkna. Shakespeare's Lucrece (1594) pictures a clumsy swimmer who drowns from struggling too hard, and the obsolete drench once meant the same. For the deliberate act, see its causative partner.
2
verbtransitive
To kill a person or other living thing by suffocating it in water or another liquid.
The storm surge drowned livestock across three coastal counties.
Entomologists would drown specimens in alcohol before pinning them.
3
verbfigurativelytransitive
To overwhelm or inundate, as if submerging the person or thing beneath a flood.
Grief drowned him in the months after the accident.
Fans drown rising stars in attention before their careers can mature.
Similaroverwhelm, swamp, inundate, engulf, flood
Note
With an object, the flood becomes something done to a thing, and the best-known idiom is drowning your sorrows: burying grief under drink or comfort. The image is old. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra has cares drowned in Bacchus's vats, and John Davies writes of men 'in sensuall pleasures drownd' (1599). Unlike the intransitive 'flooded' meaning, here the overwhelming is imposed on someone or something.
4
verbintransitive
To be flooded or submerged, whether literally under water or figuratively beneath an overwhelming quantity of something.
Half the village drowned beneath the reservoir when the dam was completed.
Without extra staff, small clinics drown in insurance paperwork.
Similarsink
Note
Hyperbole is the natural home of this sense, and it almost always takes in. It is most often in the progressive, as in 'We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom.' There the image is of excess, not danger. It can turn tender as well: in House of Cards (1990) Roger O'Neill longs 'to drown in your arms and hide in yer eyes.'
5
verbfigurativelytransitive
To obscure something, particularly amid an overwhelming volume of other sounds or items.
A burst of applause drowned the comedian's closing line.
On busy shopping sites, sponsored listings drown genuine reviews.
Similarmuffle, smother, overpower, obscure, bury
Note
Usually met in the passive: an answer is drowned in a flood of information, a voice is drowned amid a crowd's. When the thing obscured is a sound, English often adds out, as in 'applause drowned out the closing line.' Addison's Cato (1713) already has the sound version: 'My private Voice is drown'd amid the Senate's.'

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English drownen, of obscure and uncertain origin. It may descend from an Old English form and was probably influenced by Old Norse drukkna ("to drown"), which is related to Icelandic drukkna and Danish drukne, though the exact history remains disputed.