drizzle
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: baking
climatology
cooking
food
lifestyle
meteorology
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
weather
Etymology: Perhaps a back-formation from dryseling, a dissimilated variant of Middle English drysning (“a falling of dew”), from Old English drysnan (“to extinguish”), related to Old English drēosan (“to fall, to decline”), making it cognate to modern English droze and drowse. Compare also dialectal Swedish drösla.
Inflected forms:
form: drizzles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: drizzling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: drizzled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: drizzled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: drizzles
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To rain lightly.
pos: verb
tags: impersonal
examples: We had planned a picnic for Joe's birthday, but it ended up drizzling all day.
gloss: To shed slowly in minute drops or particles.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend,
As on your boughes the ysicles depend.
When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
But for the sunset of my brother’s son
It rains downright.
gloss: To pour slowly and evenly, especially oil or honey in cooking.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The recipe says to toss the salad and then drizzle olive oil on it.
gloss: To cover by pouring in this manner.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The recipe says to toss the salad and then drizzle it in olive oil.
gloss: To urinate.
pos: verb
tags: slang
examples: She'll be right back, had to drizzle before we leave.
gloss: To carry out parfilage, the process of unravelling.
pos: verb
tags: dated
examples: She found that all those ladies who did not play at cards occupied their fingers with parfilage.[...] Here, the work was called drizzling. Ladies begged their friends to give them pieces of the gold lace used on uniforms and the gold tassels of sword-belts, they picked out the metal threads, and by selling these they realised considerable sums. Prince Leopold himself drizzled continually[...]
gloss: Light rain.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Up here, it's a 'dreich' day with steady drizzle. Deep drainage channels either side of the track are already more like streams: Rannoch Moor is a wet place.
gloss: Very small, numerous, and uniformly dispersed water drops, mist, or sprinkle. Unlike fog droplets, drizzle falls to the ground.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: No longer pouring, the rain outside slowed down to a faint drizzle.
gloss: Water.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
examples: Stop drinking all of my drizzle!
gloss: A cake onto which icing, honey or syrup has been drizzled in an artistic manner.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: April 19, 2013,Felicity Cloake, "How to Cook the Perfect Lemon Drizzle Cake" in The Guardian
Drizzle is not normally good news. Not when it's falling from the sky, not when it's replacing a decent helping of sauce, and especially not when it's found on a menu in close proximity to the words "balsamic vinegar". Deliciously sticky, sweet and sour lemon drizzle cake is the one, and very honourable, exception.
The rest of the day is spent trying to concentrate on ingredient labels, ordering supplies, baking some fairy cakes for a hen party and two lemon drizzles, one for a new baby and one for an old dear's birthday.
Derived words: bedrizzle
drizzleable
drizzle-drozzle
drizzler
drizzlingly
drizzly
misle
squizzle
Translations: