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Drink

verbTo take liquid into the mouth and swallow it.

How to spell drink

drink

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce drink

American pronunciation
dringk
/drɪŋk/

What does drink mean?

  1. verbTo take liquid into the mouth and swallow it.
  2. nounA portion of liquid for swallowing, especially a beverage.

Drink in a sentence

Voice

Where does drink come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Drink is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English verb drincan, which meant simply 'to swallow liquid'. It belongs to a large family of related Germanic words, including the Dutch drinken and the German trinken, all tracing back to a common Proto-Germanic root. The noun sense, meaning a portion of liquid taken in, grew naturally alongside the verb and was firmly established by the medieval period. The strong-verb pattern, drink, drank, drunk, is one English inherited directly from its Germanic ancestors, which is why the vowel changes rather than taking a regular -ed ending. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, and the only mild trap is the silent way the 'n' and 'k' run together over the 'ng' sound rather than being written as 'drinck'.

How the word is built

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