slake
/sleɪk
/verb [with object]
1Quench or satisfy (one’s thirst): slake your thirst with citron pressé...
- With care he crouched and drank, filling a mouth that seemed always parched, striving to slake a thirst he could no longer quench.
- It is a local drink and definitely slakes the thirst.
- In a nearby lake a horse slakes its innocuous thirst as vehemently as the peasants.
Synonyms
quench, satisfy, take the edge off, sate, satiate, relieve, assuage, gratify
1.1Satisfy (desires): restaurants worked to slake the Italian obsession with food...
- All these sacrificial offerings might slake a predator's desires.
- Seasonal workers are run ragged at this time of year, trying to slake the desires of Christmas-crazed consumers like me.
- ‘Our blood lust was slaked by the destruction of Ajin and Nagin,’ Quint said.
2Combine (quicklime) with water to produce calcium hydroxide: slake the lime within a day or two of purchase...
- Hydrated slaked lime is slaked quicklime that has reacted with water to form calcium hydroxide.
- In the desert there will remain some stones, a whole gigantic ruin slowly split and slaked by waters and wind, mastic trees, frost.
- With water it is slaked; and then slowly absorbs or fixes air or gas again to turn back into the starting substance.
Origin
Old English slacian 'become less eager', also 'slacken', from the adjective slæc 'slack'; compare with Dutch slaken 'diminish, relax'.
Slake and slack (Old English) share a Germanic root, slake originally meaning ‘to become less eager’ in general, before it was restricted to words such as thirst. Slack originally meant ‘lazy, unhurried’. Both words are more distantly related to Latin laxus ‘loose’, see languish