Word.ws English Dictionary

drenching

drenching is the present participle and gerund of drench.

Noun

drenching (plural drenchings)

  1. The act by which something is drenched; a soaking.
    • […] and it contains a very good selection of shrubs and herbaceous plants, which, having good soil and plentiful drenchings of water from a garden-engine all the summer, thrive to admiration.1859, Shirley Hibberd, The Town Garden, page 53
  2. The administering of a medicinal draught to an animal.
    • Horses,^([sic]) get all sorts of medicines, wormings, drenchings, and their food may well have been produced chemically […]2015, Elen Sentier, Gardening with the Moon & Stars

Meaning of drench

Verb

drench (third-person singular simple present drenches, present participle drenching, simple past and past participle drenched)

  1. (transitive) To cause (someone) to drink; to provide (someone) with a drink.
    • Pork ſucceeds to Beef, Pies to Puddings: The Cloth is remov'd, Madam, drench'd vvith a Bumper, drops a Courtſey, and departs; […]1756 February 3 (first performance), Samuel Foote, The Englishman Return’d from Paris, Being the Sequel to The Englishman in Paris. A Farce […], London: […] Paul Vaillant, […], published 1756, →OCLC...
    1. (specifically, transitive) To administer a dose or draught of liquid medicine to (an animal), often by force.
  2. (transitive) To make (someone or something) completely wet by having water or some other liquid fall or thrown on them or it; to saturate, to soak; also (archaic), to make (someone or something) completely wet by immersing in water or some other liquid; to soak, to steep.
    • That our Garments being (as they were) drencht in the Sea, hold notwithſtanding their freſhneſſe and gloſſes, being rather new dy'de then ſtain'd with ſalte water.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    Synonyms:
    bedrench, souse
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To drown (someone).
    • VVhat flames (q[uo]d he) vvhen I thee preſent ſee, / In daunger rather to be drent, then brent?1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 49, page 270
    Synonyms:
    endrench, indrench
  4. (figuratively, obsolete, transitive) To overwhelm (someone); to drown, to engulf.
  5. (intransitive, obsolete) To be drowned; also, to be immersed in water.
    • Alas, now drencheth my ſwete fo, / That with the ſpoyle of my hart did go, / And left me but (alas) why did he ſo?a. 1548 (date written), [Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey], “Complaint of the Absence of Her Louer Being vpon the Sea”, in Songes and Sonettes, London: […] Richard Tottel, published 10 August 1557...

See all 10 meanings of drench

Adjective

drenching (comparative more drenching, superlative most drenching)

  1. That causes one to become extremely wet.
    • We'll be experiencing drenching rain all weekend.
    • In its 5 a.m. update, the National Hurricane Center noted that in its initial entry onto land, the storm remains a drenching, windy threat.2012 October 30, John Schwartz, Nina Bernstein, “Sandy Expected to Be Less Powerful, and Less Drenching, as It Moves Inland”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN...

Forms of drenching

Adjective
comparativemore drenching
superlativemost drenching
Noun
pluraldrenchings

Origin of drenching

From Middle English drenchyng, drenchynge, drenchende, from Old English drenċende, from Proto-Germanic *drankijandz, present participle of *drankijaną (“to drench”), equivalent to drench + -ing.

From Middle English drenchinge, equivalent to drench + -ing.

Words formed from drenching

Questions about drenching

What does drenching mean?
Drenching means that causes one to become extremely wet.
What is drenching the present participle and gerund of?
Drenching is the present participle and gerund of drench.
What part of speech is drenching?
Drenching can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near drenching in the dictionary

  1. drencher
  2. drenchers
  3. drenches
  4. drenchest
  5. drencheth
  6. drenching
  7. drenchingly
  8. drenchings
  9. drencht
  10. dreng
  11. drengage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drenching (page history and authors); drench (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “drenching.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drenching. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.