soaking

Pluralsoakings

1. 1
   adjective

   Thoroughly wet; saturated with water through and through.

   The dog came in from the rain with a soaking coat.

   After the flood, the carpets were left soaking and had to be replaced.

   Similarsodden, drenched, dripping, saturated, sopping

   Oppositedry

   Note

   Its most familiar home is the pair soaking wet, where it works almost as an intensifier: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) has the ground "still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday." Alone, it can stand before a noun (a soaking coat) or after a verb (the carpets were soaking), but soaking wet is the everyday phrase for being drenched through.

   We got caught in the storm and came home soaking wet.

   Take off those socks; they're soaking wet.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of soak.

   He is soaking in the bath after a long day.

   They are soaking the stained shirt in cold water.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. In the progressive it is a verb (she is soaking the beans), and as a gerund it fills a noun slot (soaking softens them). It carries every use of soak, including the absorbing one that usually takes up (the towel is soaking up the spill) and the figurative swindle (they're soaking the tourists). The gerund never takes a plural. Soakings belongs to the noun for a drenching.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An act of immersing something in water, or a thorough drenching.

   The hikers got a real soaking when the storm broke over the ridge.

   A quick soaking in warm water loosens dried glue from the joints.

   Similardrenching, dousing, wetting

4. 4
   adjective

   Of rain, falling heavily yet slowly enough to sink deep into the topsoil.

   After weeks of dry weather, a soaking rain restored the fields.

   The garden needed a soaking downpour, not a brief shower.

   Similardrenching

5. 5
   noununcountable

   A sexual practice in which the penis is inserted and held still, without thrusting, supposedly used by some conservative Christians in place of conventional intercourse.

   The campus rumor mill buzzed about soaking among the more devout students.

   She argued that soaking honored their vows while keeping them within the bounds of their faith.

   Note

   A word that circulates mostly as hearsay about Mormons. Brenda R. Weber's Latter-day Screens (2019) notes that the Amazon series Alpha House made much of it, Rachel Allyn (2021) calls it "the Mormon concept," and Everybody Curses, I Swear! (2017) jokes that "even the Mormons are soaking." Writers nearly always frame it with a qualifier or a punchline. Treat it as a reported practice, not a documented one, and expect listeners to hear mockery in it.

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