Pronunciation Verb
soak (soaks, present participle soaking; past and past participle soaked)
- (intransitive) To be saturated with liquid by being immersed in it.
- I'm going to soak in the bath for a couple of hours.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Isaiah 24:7 ↗:
- Their land shall be soaked with blood.
- (transitive) To immerse in liquid to the point of saturation or thorough permeation.
- Soak the beans overnight before cooking.
- (intransitive) To penetrate or permeate by saturation.
- The water soaked into my shoes and gave me wet feet.
- 1815 February 23, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. [...] In Three Volumes, volume (
please specify ), Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], OCLC 742335644 ↗:
- (transitive) To allow (especially a liquid) to be absorbed; to take in, receive. (usually + up)
- A sponge soaks up water; the skin soaks in moisture.
- I soaked up all the knowledge I could at university.
- (figurative, transitive) To take money from.
- 1928, Upton Sinclair, Boston
- It's a blackmail ring, and the district attorneys get a share of the loot. […] Well, they got him in the same kind of jam, and soaked him to the tune of three hundred and eighty-six thousand.
- 1928, Upton Sinclair, Boston
- (slang, dated) To drink intemperately or gluttonously.
- (metallurgy, transitive) To heat (a metal) before shaping it.
- (ceramics, transitive) To hold a kiln at a particular temperature for a given period of time.
- We should soak the kiln at cone 9 for half an hour.
- (figurative, transitive) To absorb; to drain.
- French: tremper
- German: durchnässen
- Italian: inzupparsi, imbeversi
- Portuguese: molhar-se, ensopar-se, encharcar-se
- Russian: намока́ть
- Spanish: empapar, remojar, embeber
- French: faire tremper, immerger
- German: tränken, einweichen
- Italian: mettere a bagno, mettere a mollo, imbevere
- Portuguese: molhar, ensopar, encharcar, deixar de molho
- Russian: выма́чивать
- Spanish: remojar, empapar
soak (plural soaks)
- An immersion in water etc.
- After the strenuous climb, I had a nice long soak in a bath.
- (slang, British) A drunkard.
- (slang) A carouse; a drinking session.
- (Australia) A low-lying depression that fills with water after rain.
- 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber & Faber 2003, p. 38:
- I set off early to walk along the Melbourne Road where, one of the punters had told me, there was a soak with plenty of frogs in it.
- 1996, Doris Pinkington, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 170:
- Molly and Daisy finished their breakfast and decided to take all their dirty clothes and wash them in the soak further down the river.
- 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber & Faber 2003, p. 38:
- (drunkard) alcoholic, souse, suck-pint; See also Thesaurus:drunkard
- German: Einweichen
- Italian: immersione
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