Soaked

How to spell soaked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce soaked

What does soaked mean?

1. adjectiveCompletely saturated with liquid; drenched through.
2. verbPast tense of soak: to have steeped something in liquid or absorbed it.

Soaked in a sentence

• adjective

  The sudden downpour left her coat completely soaked.

• verb

  She soaked the dried beans overnight before cooking them.

• adjective

  The carpet was soaked after the pipe burst overnight.

• verb

  The sponge soaked up the spilled juice in seconds.

Where does soaked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past form of the verb 'soak', which descends directly from the Old English socian, meaning 'to steep, lie in liquid, or draw in moisture'. That verb belonged to the same native Germanic family as 'suck' and 'sup', all built on an old root for drawing in or absorbing liquid, which is why soaking and sucking up moisture feel related. The word has stayed in continuous everyday English use for well over a thousand years, changing very little in form. The spelling trap is small but real: the long 'oa' vowel is regular enough, yet the ending is a clean '-ked', not '-cked', because the base word ends in a single 'k' with no doubling. Knowing that 'soak' keeps one 'k' makes 'soaked' easy to settle.

How the word is built

• soak (Old English socian: to steep in liquid)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)