drain
Definitions
General English
- verb to remove a liquid from something
- noun the fourth letter of the alphabet, between C and E
Accounting
- noun a gradual loss of money flowing away
Agriculture
- noun an underground pipe which takes waste water from buildings or from farmland
- noun an open channel for taking away waste water
- noun a device to allow fluid to escape from its container
Aviation
Cars & Driving
- noun a passage or piece of tube which takes water away from places in the bodywork where it tends to accumulate, such as the edge of the sunroof
- verb to empty (the sump, radiator, etc.) of a liquid
- mark on the output (live) terminal on a dynamo.
Construction
- A pipe, ditch, or trench designed to carry away waste water.
Electronics
- The current, power, or energy drawn from a source. Also, the load or process that draws this current, power, or energy.
- In a field effect transistor, the region into which the majority carriers flow from the source. The output of such a transistor is usually taken from the drain, which is analogous to the collector of a bipolar transistor, or the anode of an electron tube. Also, the electrode attached to this region. Its symbol is D. Also known as drain region, or drain electrode.
- symbolD
- symbol for electric displacement, displacement (2), and electric flux density.
Food
- verb to empty or dry something by allowing the water to flow out of or off it, or become empty or dry in this way
Medical
- noun a tube to remove liquid from the body
Real Estate
- noun a pipe or channel that carries water or sewage away from a place
Computing
- symbol the hexadecimal figure equivalent to decimal number 13
Slang
- noun dope, illicit drugs. The predictable abbreviation was typically used by British cannabis smokers in the early and mid-1970s.
- noun a detective. This abbreviation dates from the 19th century and is now almost archaic. It has metamorphosed into demon.
Origin & History of “drain”
The underlying meaning of drain seems to be ‘making dry’. It comes ultimately from *draug-, the same prehistoric Germanic base as produced English drought and dry, and in Old English it meant ‘strain through a cloth or similar porous medium’. There then follows a curious gap in the history of the word: there is no written record of its use between about 1000 ad and the end of the 14th century, and when it re-emerged it began to give the first evidence of its main modern meaning ‘draw off a liquid’.
