Drain

How to spell drain

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce drain

What does drain mean?

1. verbTo draw off or let liquid flow away gradually, or to use something up completely.
2. nounA pipe or channel that carries away waste water or other liquid.

Drain in a sentence

• verb

  Remember to drain the pasta before adding the sauce.

• noun

  The plumber cleared the blocked drain under the kitchen sink.

• verb

  The long commute and late meetings drain his energy by midweek.

• noun

  Leaves had clogged the drain at the edge of the road.

Where does drain come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Drain comes from the Old English verb dreahnian, meaning 'to strain, filter, or draw off liquid', and it is closely tied to the same ancient root that gave us the word 'dry'. The underlying idea was always about removing moisture so that something becomes dry, whether by straining wine through a cloth or letting water seep away from soggy ground. Over the centuries the spelling settled into the modern 'drain', and the meaning broadened from simply filtering liquid to carrying it away through channels and pipes, and later to the figurative sense of using something up, as when a long task drains your energy. The noun, naming the pipe or channel itself, grew naturally out of the verb. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the only thing to remember is the 'ai' vowel spelling, the same pattern seen in 'rain' and 'train'.

How the word is built

• drain (whole word, from Old English dreahnian: to strain off liquid); related to the root of 'dry'