sink

A stone sinks in water.  The sun gradually sank in the west.

(heading, physical) To move or be moved into something.

(ergative) To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance.

An iceberg sank the Titanic.  British battleships sank the Bismarck.

(transitive) To (directly or indirectly) cause a vessel to sink, generally by making it no longer watertight.

Before installing the new surfacing material, sink any protruding nails.

1980, Robert M. Jones, editor, Walls and Ceilings, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 11:

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.

(transitive) To push (something) into something.

To move or be moved into something.
To push (something) into something.

to sink a well in the ground

(transitive) To make by digging or delving.

To move or be moved into something.
To make by digging or delving.

My sister beats me at pool in public a second time. I claim some dignity back by potting two of my balls before Tammy sinks the black.

2008, Edward Keating, The Joy of Ex: A Novel:

(transitive, snooker, pool, billiards, golf) To pot; hit a ball into a pocket or hole.

To pot; hit a ball into a pocket or hole.

But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
‘How good! how kind! and he is gone.’

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XX, page 34:

I tried, but I could not wake him. This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified. Then indeed, my heart sank within me. Beside the bed, as if he had stepped out of the mist, or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely disappeared, stood a tall, thin man, all in black.

1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

Peter's heart sank. "Don't you think it is dreadful?" he asked.

1915, Thornton W. Burgess, chapter XIX, in The Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company:

(heading, social) To diminish or be diminished.

(intransitive, figuratively, of the heart or spirit) To experience apprehension, disappointment, dread, or momentary depression.

to sink one's reputation

And if I have a conscience, let it sink me

1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

Thy cruel and unnatural lust of power / Has sunk thy father more than all his years.

1700, Nicholas Rowe, The Ambitious Stepmother, act II, scene ii:

(transitive, figurative) To cause to decline; to depress or degrade.

To cause to decline; to depress or degrade.

Who would sink so low as to steal change from veterans?

2013 April 24, Steve Henschel, Niagara This Week:

(intransitive) To demean or lower oneself; to do something below one's status, standards, or morals.

If you are sent with ready money to buy anything at a shop, and happen at that time to be out of pocket, sink the money, and take up the goods on your master's account.

1726, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels:

(transitive, slang, archaic) To conceal and appropriate.

I say not always dishonorable qualifications, but a certain flexibility of disposition; a certain courtly willingness to sink obnoxious truths, and adapt ourselves to the prejudices of the minds of others […]

1849 December 15, Frederick William Robertson, Sermon 14, “The Principle of Spiritual Harvest”

(transitive, slang, archaic) To keep out of sight; to suppress; to ignore.

[…] just thought she was wrecked from all the Diamond White ciders she'd been sinking – I'd even bought her a couple of Blastaways, which in hindsight was a mistake.

2021, Barbara Copperthwaite, The Girl in the Missing Poster:

(transitive, slang) To drink (especially something alcoholic).

To drink (especially something alcoholic).

for 13 of his 15 years in charge, Burrell sank more money into the farm than he received in revenues, and the estate was £1.5m overdrawn.

2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian:

I have sunk thousands of pounds into this project.

to sink the national debt

(transitive, slang, archaic) To reduce or extinguish by payment.

I think our country sinks beneath the yoke.

c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

then keep an even steady Fire under them, not too fierce at first, lest you scorch them; and let not the Fire sink or slacken, but rather increase till the Hops be near dry'd

1721, John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry:

(intransitive) To be overwhelmed or depressed; to fail in strength.

However, before the entire mass was detached, a copious oozing of blood took place, when the patient lost from a pint to a pint and a half; and which, doubtless, so lowered him that he never rallied, but sank in about an hour and a half after the operation was completed.

1865 June 17, C. C. Richards, M.D., &c., “Report of a Case of Multiple Fatty Tumours”, in The Lancet, volume 85, number 2181, London: George Fall, page 650:

[…] as September drew towards its close, and reports came from Munich that Gömbös was sinking fast, the Right in their turn were credited by the Prager Presse and by certain foreign journalists, who drew their inspiration from the same sources, with sensational designs.

1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 174:

The Alps and Pyreneans sink before him: / Through wind and waves, and storms he works his way

a. 1746, Joseph Addison, The Tragedy of Cato, act I, scene i:

It was not far from the house; but the ground sank into a depression there, and the ridge of it behind shut out everything except just the roof of the tallest hayrick. As one sat on the sward behind the elm, with the back turned on the rick and nothing in front but the tall elms and the oaks in the other hedge, it was quite easy to fancy it the verge of the prairie with the backwoods close by.

1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:

(intransitive) To decrease in volume, as a river; to subside; to become diminished in volume or in apparent height.

en-verb

sink (third-person singular simple present sinks, present participle sinking, simple past sank or (dialectal) sunk, past participle sunk or (archaic) sunken)

sinks (present singular third-person)
sinking (participle present)
sank (past)
sunk (dialectal past)
sunk (participle past)
sunken (archaic participle past)

into the mind запа́сти в па́м’ять

have one's spirits sink занепа́сти ду́хом

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.

der

Proto-Indo-European *sengʷ- (“to fall, sink”)


sink

Roy: The work was fiiine. There was nothing wrong with the work. But they caught him... He pissed in the sink.
Jen: Oh. Oh!
Roy: Yeah...
Jen: Which sink?
Roy: All the sinks. Yeah, he basically went on a pee parade around the house.
Jen: Oh God, I have to fire him.

2008 November 21, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 3, Episode 1

A basin used for holding water for washing.

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

A place that absorbs resources or energy.

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

An excessive sink rate at touchdown can cause the aircraft's landing gear to collapse.

(uncountable) Descending motion; descent.

Jones has a two-seamer with heavy sink.

(baseball) The motion of a sinker pitch.

Descending motion; descent.
The motion of a sinker pitch.

(computing, programming) An object or callback that captures events.

transportation network
transportation network

(graph theory) A destination vertex in a transportation network.

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

An abode of degraded persons; a wretched place.

(theater) A stage trapdoor for shifting scenery.

(mining) An excavation smaller than a shaft.

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

a bathroom sink sink (canonical)
sinks (plural)

washbasin for washing fixtures without water supply

кухо́нна ми́йка f (kuxónna mýjka, literally “kitchen sink”)