drain
/dɹiːn/ verb B2- To lose liquid. · The clogged sink drained slowly.· Knock knock. / Who’s there? / Dwayne. / Dwayne who? / Drain the bathtub, I’m drowning.
- To flow gradually. · The water of low ground drains off.
- To cause liquid to flow out of. · Please drain the sink. It’s full of dirty water.
- To convert a perennially wet place into a dry one. · They had to drain the swampy land before the parking lot could be built.
- To deplete of energy or resources. · The stress of this job is really draining me.
- To draw off by degrees; to cause to flow gradually out or off; hence, to exhaust.
- To fall off the bottom of the playfield.
- To make a shot.
He/she/it drains · Past drained · Past participle drained · -ing form draining
Verb forms
- Base form
- drain
- He/she/it
- drains
- Past
- drained
- Past participle
- drained
- -ing form
- draining
Phrasal verbs and expressions
From the library
“DEAR SIR.—It has struck me that it is our duty to drain the moat, in the hope that we may find some—”
Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
IT was October again when Anne was ready to go back to school--a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue.
He was always a man of iron nerve, and the story is still told in India how he crawled down a drain after a wounded man-eating tiger.
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