Hello,

As I type this morning I’m listening to heavy rain battering my somewhat bedraggled late October garden. Anybody outside right now is going to be drenched. Apparently that includes my daughter whose college decided to conduct a fire drill on a very wet day. The trick is to bring your umbrella with you when evacuating in such circumstances.

I researched drenched for my upcoming book “Words the Weather Gave Us”. It includes a chapter with 50 rain words, so I had plenty from which to chose today.

{Extract from “Words the Weather Gave Us” Copyright Grace Tierney 2025}

This one I use often. If caught in a rain-shower unprepared and soaked through, I will announce “I’m drenched”. However an early user of English would then assume I had stopped by the pub on my walk.

Drench was drencan in Old English and it meant to ply with drink, to make drunk, to submerge, or to drown. The last meanings on that list work with the idea of rain clouds but the word’s roots lie in the verb drincan (to drink).

Drench has cousins in Old Norse, Swedish, Dutch, and German. All the northern Europeans were knocking back the ale and mead at that time. A friend might drench you the night before your wedding, for example.

It was the 1500s before drenching gained the idea of making somebody wet by throwing liquid over them but even in the word’s earlier days there was the idea of a drenc-flód which was a storm or a deluge.

The concept of drenching being forcing somebody to drink does linger however, in the idea of drenching farm animals with medicine.

{end of extract}

Wherever you are today, I hope you avoid being drenched, unless you’re enjoying a few pints with friends.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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