Drainage

How to spell drainage

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce drainage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does drainage mean?

1. nounThe natural or artificial removal of surface or subsurface water from an area, or the system of channels that achieves it.

Drainage in a sentence

• The builder installed proper drainage to stop the patio from flooding.

• Poor drainage left the field waterlogged for most of the winter.

Where does drainage come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the verb 'drain', which descends from the Old English 'dreahnian', meaning to draw off liquid or to strain something dry; that older sense is related to the same root that gives us 'dry'. To this native English verb was attached the suffix '-age', a productive ending that English absorbed from Old French and ultimately from the Latin '-aticum', used to form nouns naming a process, a collective system, or a charge for something (as in 'postage' or 'mileage'). The combination produced 'drainage', meaning both the act of draining and the system of channels that carries water away. The word appears in English from around the early seventeenth century, growing common as agriculture and engineering needed a name for the deliberate removal of standing water. The spelling trap sits in the join: writers must keep the silent 'e' of 'drain' before adding '-age', so it is drain + age, not 'drainge'.

How the word is built

• drain (from Old English dreahnian: to draw off liquid)
• -age (noun suffix meaning a process or system)