soak

From Middle English soken, from Old English socian (“to soak, steep”, literally “to cause to suck (up)”), from Proto-Germanic *sukōną (“to soak”), causative of Proto-Germanic *sūkaną (“to suck”). Cognate with Middle Dutch soken (“to cause to suck”). More at suck.

• (British) enPR: sōk, IPA^(key): /səʊk/
• (General American) enPR: sōk, IPA^(key): /soʊk/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊk
• Homophone: soke

soak (third-person singular simple present soaks, present participle soaking, simple past and past participle soaked)

1. (intransitive) To be saturated with liquid by being immersed in it.

   I'm going to soak in the bath for a couple of hours.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 24:7:

     Their land shall be soaked with blood.

2. (transitive) To immerse in liquid to the point of saturation or thorough permeation.

   Soak the beans overnight before cooking.

3. (intransitive) To penetrate or permeate by saturation.

   The water soaked into my shoes and gave me wet feet.

   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:

     The rivulet beneath […] soaked its way obscurely through wreaths of snow.

4. (transitive) To allow (especially a liquid) to be absorbed; to take in, receive. (usually + up)

   A sponge soaks up water; the skin soaks in moisture.

   I soaked up all the knowledge I could at university.

   • 1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 4, in Pulling the Strings:

     The case was that of a murder. It had an element of mystery about it, however, which was puzzling the authorities. A turban and loincloth soaked in blood had been found; also a staff.

5. (slang, figurative, transitive) To overcharge or swindle out of a large amount of money.

   Synonym: fleece

   • 1928, Upton Sinclair, Boston:

     It's a blackmail ring, and the district attorneys get a share of the loot. […] Well, they got him in the same kind of jam, and soaked him to the tune of three hundred and eighty-six thousand.

   • 2015, P. J. O'Rourke, Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader:

     Sure, if we own an aerospace contracting company, a five-thousand-acre sugar-beet farm, or a savings and loan with the president's son on the board of directors, we can soak Uncle Sucker for millions.

6. (slang, dated) To drink intemperately or gluttonously.
7. (metallurgy, transitive) To heat (a metal) before shaping it.
8. (ceramics, transitive) To hold a kiln at a particular temperature for a given period of time.

   We should soak the kiln at cone 9 for half an hour.

9. (figurative, transitive) To absorb; to drain.
   • 1624, Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture, […], London: […] Iohn Bill, →OCLC:

     That they will want a certaine sucking and soaking

10. (slang, chiefly Mormonism) To engage in penetrative sex without hip thrusting.^[1]

soak (third-person singular simple present soaks, present participle soaking, simple past and past participle soaked)

1. (transitive) (slang, boxing) To hit or strike.
   • 1926, [P.G. Wodehouse], The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy:

     Wasn't Mr. Sipperley pretty shirty when he came to and found that you had been soaking him with putters?

soak (plural soaks)

1. An immersion in water etc.
   • 2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     wildlife tourism has turned Knepp into a successful business that employs more people than it did when it was a farm. Springtime overnighters snuggling down in a luxury treehouse after a soak in the open-air, wood-fired Swedish Hikki bathtub may hear nightingales serenading their consorts

   After the strenuous climb, I had a nice long soak in a bath.

2. (slang, British) A drunkard.
3. (slang) A carouse; a drinking session.
4. (Australia) A low-lying depression that fills with water after rain.
   • 1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber & Faber, published 2003, page 38:

     I set off early to walk along the Melbourne Road where, one of the punters had told me, there was a soak with plenty of frogs in it.

   • 1996, Doris Pinkington, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 170:

     Molly and Daisy finished their breakfast and decided to take all their dirty clothes and wash them in the soak further down the river.

• (drunkard): alcoholic, souse, suck-pint; See also Thesaurus:drunkard

• soak test

• Kosa, koas, oaks, okas

From Dutch zwak (“weak”), from Middle Dutch swac, from Old Dutch *swak, from Proto-West Germanic *swak.

• IPA^(key): [ˈsoaʔ]
• Hyphenation: so‧ak

soak

1. (colloquial) weak.

   Synonym: lemah

• “soak” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia, Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016.