Other forms: sunk, sank, sinking, sinks
The sink is the basin in the kitchen with a tap over it, where the dishes pile up and the water drains away. You fill it, you scrub in it, you pull the plug and listen to it empty.
Sink is also the verb it came from: things sink when they go down through water and do not come back — a stone, a boat, a boot in the mud. Bodies sink into armchairs, the sun sinks behind the roofs, prices sink, and your heart sinks when you see the envelope. The past tense is sank and the participle is sunk: the ship sank, the ship has sunk. To sink money into something is to pour it in with no way of getting it out again, and when news finally sinks in, you have understood it at last. One regional note: for the basin in the bathroom, British English says basin or washbasin more than sink.
1nounsinkThe fixed basin with taps where you wash dishes or your hands.
“He left the pan in the sink to soak.”
Patternin the sink · kitchen / bathroom sink · wash sth in the sink · the sink is blocked · sink unit
2verbbelowTo go down below the surface of water and not come back up.
“Cork will not sink, however hard you push it under.”
3verbmoveTo move slowly downwards.
“She let herself sink into the armchair without taking her coat off.”
4verbfallTo fall to a lower level or value.
“Prices sink every year in the week after Christmas.”
5verbputTo put a large amount of money or effort into something.
“They sink every spare pound into that boat.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
sink is a basin.
SINK → where the plates SINK under the water
Fill the sink with water and drop the dirty plates in: they sink to the bottom and wait there to be washed.
Sink is one of the very old ones. Old English sincan became Middle English synken, and behind them stand Proto-Germanic *sinkwaną and a Proto-Indo-European root *sengʷ-, to fall, to sink. English once had a separate verb for the other half of the job — Old English senċan, to make something sink — and lost it, which is why one word now covers both the boat going down and the torpedo that put it there.
Proto-Indo-European
*sengʷ- — to fall, sink
Proto-Germanic
*sinkwaną
Proto-West Germanic
*sinkwan
Old English
sincan
Middle English
synken
English, today
sink
From Middle English synken, from Old English sincan, from Proto-West Germanic sinkwan, from Proto-Germanic sinkwaną, from Proto-Indo-European sengʷ- (“to fall, sink”). Compare West Frisian sinke, Low German sinken, Dutch zinken, German sinken, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål synke, Swedish sjunka. In the causative sense, it replaced Old English senċan (“make sink”) from Proto-Germanic sankwijaną.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA