Drizzle

How to spell drizzle

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce drizzle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does drizzle mean?

1. nounLight rain made up of very fine, slowly falling drops.
2. verbTo rain gently in fine, light drops.
3. verbTo pour a thin stream of liquid slowly over food.

Drizzle in a sentence

• noun

  A fine drizzle settled over the harbour all afternoon.

• verb

  It began to drizzle just as the match resumed.

• verb

  The recipe says to drizzle olive oil over the roasted vegetables.

• noun

  The forecast promised sunshine but delivered a grey drizzle instead.

• verb

  Clouds gathered and the sky started to drizzle by noon.

• verb

  She likes to drizzle honey across warm toast.

Where does drizzle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Drizzle most likely descends from the Old English verb dreosan, meaning 'to fall' or 'to drip away', the same root that lies behind 'dreary'. By late Middle English a related form 'drisning' described the gentle falling of fine moisture or dew, and around the sixteenth century this developed into 'drizzle' with the -le ending that English often adds to suggest a small, repeated action, as in 'sparkle' or 'trickle'. The word therefore carries the built-in idea of many tiny drops falling steadily rather than in a downpour. Its Germanic ancestry shows in the homely, weather-bound feel of the word, and the doubled z (a fairly rare letter to double) is the main thing writers have to remember. Over time it broadened from rain alone to the kitchen sense of letting a thin stream of liquid fall over food.

How the word is built

• drizz- (from Old English dreosan: to fall, drip)
• -le (frequentative suffix indicating repeated small action)