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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sink.

To move or be moved into something.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈsɪŋk/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈsiŋk//zɪŋk/
  1. To move or be moved into something. To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance.

    ergative · physical
    A stone sinks in water.  The sun gradually sank in the west.
  2. To move or be moved into something. To (directly or indirectly) cause a vessel to sink, generally by making it no longer watertight.

    physical · transitive
    An iceberg sank the Titanic.  British battleships sank the Bismarck.
  3. To move or be moved into something. To push (something) into something.

    physical · transitive
    The joint will hold tighter if you sink a wood screw through both boards.  The dog sank its teeth into the delivery man's leg.
  4. To move or be moved into something. To make by digging or delving.

    physical · transitive
    to sink a well in the ground
  5. To move or be moved into something. To pot; hit a ball into a pocket or hole.

    physical · transitive
  6. To diminish or be diminished. To experience apprehension, disappointment, dread, or momentary depression.

    figuratively · intransitive
  7. To diminish or be diminished. To cause to decline; to depress or degrade.

    figuratively · transitive
    to sink one's reputation
  8. To diminish or be diminished. To demean or lower oneself; to do something below one's status, standards, or morals.

    intransitive
  9. To conceal and appropriate.

    archaic · slang · transitive
  10. To keep out of sight; to suppress; to ignore.

    archaic · slang · transitive
  11. To drink (especially something alcoholic).

    slang · transitive
  12. To pay absolutely.

    slang · transitive
    I have sunk thousands of pounds into this project.
  13. To reduce or extinguish by payment.

    archaic · slang · transitive
    to sink the national debt
  14. To be overwhelmed or depressed; to fail in strength.

    intransitive
  15. To die.

    archaic · intransitive
  16. To decrease in volume, as a river; to subside; to become diminished in volume or in apparent height.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

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.

noun/ˈsɪŋk/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈsiŋk//zɪŋk/
  1. A basin used for holding water for washing.

  2. A drain for carrying off wastewater.

  3. A sinkhole.

  4. A depression in land where water collects, with no visible outlet.

  5. A heat sink.

  6. A place that absorbs resources or energy.

  7. A habitat that cannot support a population on its own but receives the excess of individuals from some other source.

  8. Descending motion; descent.

    uncountable
    An excessive sink rate at touchdown can cause the aircraft's landing gear to collapse.
  9. Descending motion; descent. The motion of a sinker pitch.

    uncountable
    Jones has a two-seamer with heavy sink.
  10. An object or callback that captures events.

  11. A destination vertex in a transportation network.

  12. A node in directed graph for which all of its edges go into it; one with no outgoing edges.

  13. An abode of degraded persons; a wretched place.

  14. A depression in a stereotype plate.

  15. A stage trapdoor for shifting scenery.

  16. An excavation smaller than a shaft.

  17. One or several systems that remove currency from the game's economy, thus controlling or preventing inflation.

Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.