Definition of 'drown'
Word forms: 3rd person singular present tense drowns, present participle drowning, past tense, past participle drowned
1. transitive verb/intransitive verb
2. intransitive verb
3. transitive verb
4.
Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers
British English pronunciation
American English pronunciation
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Word Frequency
drown in American English
verb intransitive
1.
to die by suffocation in water or other liquid
verb transitive
2.
to kill by suffocation in water or other liquid
Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition. Copyright © 2010 by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Word origin
ME drounen, prob. < var. of ON drukna, drown, akin to OE druncnian, to become drunk, be drowned < druncen, pp. of drincan, drinkWord Frequency
drown in American English
(draun)
intransitive verb
1.
to die under water or other liquid of suffocation
transitive verb
SYNONYMS 4. deluge, engulf, submerge, drench, soak.2.
to kill by submerging under water or other liquid
3.
to destroy or get rid of by, or as if by, immersion
He drowned his sorrows in drink
4.
to flood or inundate
5. (often fol. by out)
to overwhelm so as to render inaudible, as by a louder sound
8. See drown in
Most material © 2005, 1997, 1991 by Penguin Random House LLC. Modified entries © 2019
by Penguin Random House LLC and HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Derived forms
drowner noun
Word origin
[1250–1300; ME drounnen, OE druncnian, perh. by loss of c between nasals and shift of length from nn to ou]Word Frequency
drown in British English
verb
Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers
Derived forms
drowner (ˈdrowner) noun
Word origin
C13: probably from Old English druncnian; related to Old Norse drukna to be drowned
Quotations
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drown
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In other languages
drown
British English: drown
/draʊn/ VERB
When someone drowns, or when they are drowned, they die because they have gone under water and cannot breathe.
Forty-eight people drowned after their boat capsized.
- American English: drown /ˈdraʊn/
- Arabic: يَغْرَقُ
- Brazilian Portuguese: afogar
- Chinese: 溺水
- Croatian: utopiti se
- Czech: utopit (se)
- Danish: drukne
- Dutch: verdrinken
- European Spanish: ahogar
- Finnish: hukkua
- French: se noyer
- German: ertrinken
- Greek: πνίγω
- Italian: affogare
- Japanese: 溺死する
- Korean: 익사하다
- Norwegian: drukne
- Polish: utopić się
- European Portuguese: afogar
- Romanian: a îneca
- Russian: тонуть
- Spanish: ahogar
- Swedish: drunkna
- Thai: จมน้ำ
- Turkish: suda boğulmak
- Ukrainian: тонути
- Vietnamese: chết đuối
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Definition of drown from the Collins English Dictionary
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