Word.ws English Dictionary

drown the miller

drown the miller verb: to put too much water in something; overdilute.

Verb

drown the miller (third-person singular simple present drowns the miller, present participle drowning the miller, simple past and past participle drowned the miller)

  1. (idiomatic, obsolete, slang) To put too much water in something; overdilute.
    • […] I tell my Bowl Friends, that our ministers have spoilt the punch. Sometimes they give us too much spirit, as when they display a vigour beyond the law; and sometimes, as we say, they drown the Miller, and make sad insipid stuff of it; again they sting our throats with acid; but it is not once...1821, The Economist, page 241

Forms of drown the miller

third-person singular presentdrowns the miller
present participledrowning the miller
past participledrowned the miller
pastdrowned the miller

Origin of drown the miller

Originally drown the miller's thumb, meaning to go over the specified mark.

Questions about drown the miller

What does drown the miller mean?
Drown the miller means to put too much water in something; overdilute.
What part of speech is drown the miller?
Drown the miller is a verb.
What is the past tense of drown the miller?
The past tense of drown the miller is drowned the miller.

Words near drown the miller in the dictionary

  1. droving
  2. drow
  3. drown
  4. drown one's sorrows
  5. drown out
  6. drown the miller
  7. drown'd
  8. drownable
  9. drownage
  10. drownages
  11. drownd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drown the miller (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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