Wet

How to spell wet

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wet

What does wet mean?

1. adjectiveCovered or soaked with water or another liquid; not dry.
2. verbTo make something damp or soaked by applying liquid.

Wet in a sentence

• adjective

  The towels were still wet when she packed the bag.

• verb

  You should wet the brush before loading it with paint.

• adjective

  He wiped the wet paint off his sleeve before it dried.

• verb

  Remember to wet the sponge before scrubbing the counter.

Where does wet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native word, descending from the Old English wǣt, meaning 'moist' or 'soaked', which is closely tied to the word for water itself. Both wǣt and the parallel noun wǣta sprang from the same Germanic root that also produced water, and you can still hear that family resemblance in the shared opening sound. Cognates survive across the northern languages, including the Old Norse vatr, and the influence of that Norse form helped keep the short, clipped spelling we use today. The word has stayed remarkably stable for more than a thousand years, never picking up the silent letters that complicate so many English words. Its directness is precisely why it is one of the easier words to spell, since what you hear is exactly what you write.

How the word is built

• wet (from Old English wǣt: moist, soaked), a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix