sink

The word "sink" can be either a noun or a verb.

As a verb, it’s irregular and changes as follows:

In this first set of examples, the verb "sink" means to go down, usually in water or some sort of soft material.

• Their boat is sinking.
• Our feet sank in the wet mud.
• The house is starting to sink on one side.
• The submarine was sunk by a torpedo fired by an enemy ship.
• Robb sank his teeth into a large hamburger.

"Sink" is also used when a person loses hope or experiences tragedy.

• Astrid’s heart sank when she heard the bad news.
• She got a sinking feeling that something bad had happened. (In this sentence, "sinking" is an adjective.)

In sports such as basketball or golf, "sink" is used when a ball goes through a net or a hole:

He hopes to sink this putt.
Basketball players try to sink the ball through the net.

You can also use "sink" when making an investment:

• They sank $100,000 of their money into a business.
• Rhonda and Troy don’t want to sink any more money into their house because they might move.
• Sinking thousands of dollars into the stock market is a bad idea if you don’t know what you are doing.

The word "sink" can also be a noun. A sink looks like this:

bathroom sink

• Bill shaves every morning in front of the bathroom sink.
• The kitchen sink is full of dishes that need to be washed.
• Rinse those dirty dishes in the sink before you put them in the dishwasher.

kitchen sink

Click here to learn more words.

This page was first published on December 21, 2013. It was updated on September 27, 2016.