drip

UK/ˈdɹɪp/US/ˈdɹɪp/

verbB15 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,629 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: dripping, drips, dripped

To drip is to fall in single drops, one after another. A tap that will not stop dripping at two in the morning; rain coming off the edge of a roof onto the step below.

It works both ways round: the water drips, and the tap drips. Drip WITH something means covered in it — dripping with sweat, dripping with gold — and dripping wet means soaked right through. A drip is one drop and also the sound of it, and in hospital a drip is the bag and tube feeding fluid into someone's arm: 'she was put on a drip'. Drip-feed is giving something out slowly and on purpose, information as much as liquid. Old British slang calls a dull, feeble person a drip; new slang, out of hip-hop, calls stylish clothes drip — two meanings that would stare at each other in disbelief.

Definitions of drip

1verbdripTo fall in small drops.B1~2%
“Water dripped from the ceiling into a bucket all night.”
2verbliquidTo let liquid fall in drops.B1~78%
“The tap in the bathroom drips and nobody has fixed it.”
3verbcoveredTo be covered in or full of something.B2~2%
“He came in from his run dripping with sweat.”
4nounsingleA single drop of liquid, or the sound of drops falling.B1~2%
“The only sound in the flat was the drip of the kitchen tap.”
5nountubeA tube and bag that feed liquid slowly into a patient's vein.B2~16%
“She spent two days on a drip before they let her go home.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

dripping wet — soaked through, wet enough to leave a puddle

Also practised as

nounLiquid escaping one slow drop at a time.

Where it comes from

Drip goes back through Middle English drippen and Old English drypan to Proto-Germanic *drupjaną, to fall in drops, from *drupô, a drop. Northern Europe kept every version of it: Dutch druipen, Low German drüppen, German tröpfeln, Norwegian dryppe. The word sounds like the thing it names, and it has sounded like that for a very long time.

Proto-Germanic
*drupjaną — to fall in drops, drip
Old English
drypan
Middle English
drippen
English, today
drip

From Middle English drippen, druppen, from Old English drypan, from Proto-Germanic drupjaną (“to fall in drops, drip”), from Proto-Germanic drupô (“drop”). Akin to West Frisian drippe (“to drip”), Dutch druipen, druppelen (“to drip”), German Low German drüppen (“to drip”), German tropfen, tröpfeln (“to drip”), Norwegian Bokmål dryppe, Norwegian Nynorsk drypa (“to drip”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove, Sounds & Noises

First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

drip in the wild

Manually brewed drip coffee is typically referred to as pour-over coffee.
Drip coffee
Drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or "drips", a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time.
Drip marketing
When 5% glucose (dextrose) IV drip is not available high levels of fructose are given orally.
Excitotoxicity
Coffee, one of the first automatic drip coffee makers to be introduced to the American consumer market.
Edmund Abel
From the early 1950s on, Potter's style kept with the early works of Ad Reinhardt and with Jackson Pollock's 1940s pre-drip works.
Fuller Potter

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of drip

1verbdripTo fall in small drops.B1~2%

“Water dripped from the ceiling into a bucket all night.”

2verbliquidTo let liquid fall in drops.B1~78%

“The tap in the bathroom drips and nobody has fixed it.”

3verbcoveredTo be covered in or full of something.B2~2%

“He came in from his run dripping with sweat.”

4nounsingleA single drop of liquid, or the sound of drops falling.B1~2%

“The only sound in the flat was the drip of the kitchen tap.”

5nountubeA tube and bag that feed liquid slowly into a patient's vein.B2~16%

“She spent two days on a drip before they let her go home.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.