Other forms: wettest, wetter, wetting, wetted, wets
Something wet has water on it or in it. Hair straight out of the shower, socks that went through a puddle, the pavement shining after rain, the ring your glass leaves on the table.
Wet has degrees underneath it — damp is a little wet, soaked and drenched are wet all the way through — and it doubles as a word for weather: a wet weekend, the wet season. As a verb it is what a child does to the bed and what rain does to the washing, and in everyday speech the past tense is wet rather than wetted. Wet paint, wet cement and wet ink all mean not yet dry, so keep your sleeve away. In British English a wet person is feeble and easily pushed around, and a wet blanket is the one who kills the mood. Somebody wet behind the ears is too new to know anything yet.
1adjectivewetCovered in water, or soaked with it.~54%
“His coat was wet through by the time he got home.”
2adjectiveweatherOf weather: rainy.~37%
“It was the wettest June on record.”
3adjectivedryNot yet dry.~5%
“The paint is still wet, so mind your sleeve.”
4verbverbTo make something wet.~2%
“Wet the cloth and wring it out before you wipe the screen.”
5adjectivefeebleFeeble and easily pushed around. (British, informal).~2%
“Don't be so wet — go over and ask her.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Wet and water are the same word underneath. Old English wǣtan, to wet or moisten, comes through Proto-Germanic *wētijaną from a Proto-Indo-European root *wed-, which meant water and wet together — and that root also surfaced in English as water itself. A thousand years on, nothing much has moved.
Proto-Indo-European
*wed-
Middle English
wet — wet, moistened
English, today
wet
From wet. From Middle English wet (“wet, moistened”), wett, wette, past participle of Middle English weten (“to wet”), from Old English wǣtan (“to wet, moisten, water”), from Proto-West Germanic wātijan, from Proto-Germanic wētijaną (“to wet, make wet”), from Proto-Indo-European wed- (“water, wet”) (also the source of water). Cognate with Scots weit, wete (“to wet”), stq wäitje (“to wet; drench”), Icelandic væta (“to wet”). Compare also Middle English weet (“wet”), from Old English wǣt (“wet, moist, rainy”), from Proto-West Germanic wāt, from Proto-Germanic wētaz (“wet, moist”), related to Scots weit, weet, wat (“wet”), frr wiat, weet, wäit (“wet”), stq wäit (“wet”), West Frisian wiet (“wet”), Middle Dutch wet (“wet, damp, watery”), Swedish - and Norwegian våt (“wet”), Danish våd (“wet”), Faroese vátur (“wet”), Icelandic votur (“wet”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA