f you know the verb to drown, “to drown”, it becomes very easy to understand the phrasal verb drown out , which is what you use to say that one sound drowned out another. For example, if a car passes by while you are talking and leaves your friend’s voice inaudible for an instant, what the car did was drown out his voice.
Usually, drown out is translated as “muffling the sound”, but in some situations a different translation may be necessary. See: in two of the phrases below ( The train drowned us out and The protesters drowned the speaker out ), it is not specified what type of sound was muffled. In such cases we need to examine the context and add something to the Portuguese translation so that the meaning is clear.
A second and relatively rare sense of drown out is that of “being expelled by a flood”. If you think the two words that make up the phrasal makes it easy to see how this sense occurs: drown (drown) + October (out). You can use this meaning of drown out to say that a flood forced you to leave your home, for example – but I hope you never need to use the verb like that!
Let’s look at the examples, then. Don’t forget to add some of the phrases to your Anki review blocks , a habit that helps a lot to reinforce your learning.
1 – Drown out , “muffle / cover up (the sound of something)”.
The music almost drowned out the sound of his voice.
The music almost drowned out the sound of his voice.
I immediately turned up the TV in an attempt to drown out my brother’s tuba practice.
Immediately, I increased the sound of the TV, in an attempt to drown out the sound of my brother practicing tuba.
(Note the use of another phrasal, which we recently examined here on the website: turn up .)
The noise of the passing train drowned out our conversation.
The noise of the passing train drowned out our conversation.
The train drowned us out .
The train covered our voices .
I turned up my TV in order to drown out the noise coming from next door.
I turned the TV on to muffle the noise coming from the apartment next door.
The protesters drowned the speaker out .
Protestants drowned out the speaker’s speech .
Their cries were drowned out by the passing train.
Their screams were drowned out by the passing train.
The sound of the telephone was drowned out by the vacuum cleaner.
The sound of the phone was covered by the vacuum cleaner.
He uses the music to drown out other noises around him.
He uses music to drown out other noises around him.
The music drowned out their conversation.
The music drowned out their conversation.
2 – Drown out how to “force out” or “expel” (because of floods or tides).
The high waters almost drowned the farmers out last year.
The high waters almost forced farmers to leave last year.
Unfortunately, that hurricane drowned us out , and we’ve been staying with relatives ever since.
Unfortunately, this hurricane drove us out and we’ve been staying with relatives ever since.
At night the rain poured down and flooded our camp and about drowned us out .
At night the rain fell hard and filled our camp and almost expelled us from there .
As you can see, with this phrasal verb we have one more of those cases that are not so easy to translate, but easy to understand and use. So write it down and incorporate that phrasal verb further into your English vocabulary.
