a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
wet out, to treat (fabric) with a wetting agent to increase its absorbency.
Origin: before 900; Middle English wett, past participle of weten,Old English wǣtan to wet; replacing Middle English weet,Old English wǣt, cognate with Old Frisian wēt,Old Norse vātr; akin to water
Synonyms 1. dampened, drenched. 4. misty, drizzling. 7. humid. 10. wetness, humidity, dampness, dankness. 11. drizzle. 14.Wet,drench,saturate,soak imply moistening something. To wet is to moisten in any manner with water or other liquid: to wet or dampen a cloth. Drench suggests wetting completely as by a downpour: A heavy rain drenched the fields. Saturate implies wetting to the limit of absorption: to saturate a sponge. To soak is to keep in a liquid for a time: to soak beans before baking.
O.E. wæt "moist, liquid," from P.Gmc. *wætaz (cf. O.Fris. wet ). Also from the O.N. form, vatr. All related to water. The verb is O.E. wætan "to be wet." Wet blanket "person who has a dispiriting effect" is recorded from 1879, from use of blankets drenched
in water to smother fires (the phrase is attested in this literal sense from 1662). All wet "in the wrong" is recorded from 1923, Amer.Eng.; earlier simply wet "ineffectual," and perhaps ult. from slang meaning "drunken" (c.1700). Wet-nurse is from 1620; wet dream is from 1851; wetback "illegal Mexican immigrant to the U.S." is attested from c.1924, from notion of wading the Rio Grande.
mod. alcohol intoxicated. : He's been drinking since noon and is pretty wet.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition. Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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