Crossword clues for slake
slake
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Slake \Slake\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Slaked; p. pr. & vb. n. Slaking.] [OE. slaken to render slack, to slake, AS. sleacian, fr. sleac slack. See Slack, v. & a.]
-
To allay; to quench; to extinguish; as, to slake thirst. ``And slake the heavenly fire.''
--Spenser.It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart.
--Shak. To mix with water, so that a true chemical combination shall take place; to slack; as, to slake lime.
Slake \Slake\, v. i.
To go out; to become extinct. ``His flame did slake.''
--Sir T. Browne.To abate; to become less decided. [R.]
--Shak.To slacken; to become relaxed. ``When the body's strongest sinews slake.'' [R.]
--Sir J. Davies.-
To become mixed with water, so that a true chemical combination takes place; as, the lime slakes.
Slake trough, a trough containing water in which a blacksmith cools a forging or tool.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late Old English sleacian, slacian "become slack or remiss; slacken an effort" (intransitive); "delay, retard" (transitive), from slæc "lax" (see slack (adj.)). Transitive sense of "make slack" is from late 12c. Sense of "allay, diminish in force, quench, extinguish" (in reference to thirst, hunger, desire, wrath, etc.) first recorded early 14c. via notion of "make slack or inactive." Related: Slaked; slaking.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 (label en intransitive obsolete) Of a person: to become less energetic, to slacken in one's efforts. (11th-17thc.) 2 (label en intransitive obsolete) To slacken; to become relaxed or loose. (11th-16thc.) 3 (label en intransitive obsolete) To become less intense; to weaken, decrease in force. (14th-19thc.)
WordNet
Usage examples of "slake".
They smoked for a while then Billy Anker, casting around for something to slake his thirst, drank the rosewater from the bedside dish.
No sooner did the men who came to the house hear that I was a maid than they longed to slake their brutal lust upon me, offering me gold if I would submit to their caresses.
Between each gingall was a small hole in the parapet which held an earthen vessel filled with slaked lime, ready to be flung in the faces of an enemy attempting to escalade the walls.
June day, and meseems I know thy lack, and the slaking of it lieth somewhat nearer than Hampton under Scaur, which we shall not reach these two days if we go afoot all the way.
He suspected the pucka lees were still back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from the wells in the village.
I hardly need say that I had never in my life suffered from the crippling Christian vice of pudicity, nor had I been abstemious of sexual appetite, nor had I been lacking for opportunities to slake that appetite.
Paris has been added with the object of suppressing the action of slaking and inducing quicker setting.
His name sounded from her like a blessing, a cool, soft rush that washed over him like a fresh mountain stream, slaking his thirst, cooling his heat.
The Archipelago was ruled by vicious savages who used their women in common, slaking blood lust and the other kind in orgies of cruelty and debauchery.
When naught but bones remained of the marmots, tossed beside the tiny skins, she reached a small waterskin to him to slake his thirst.
Jim had been led to suppose they would be, on the exterminating effects of lime upon slugs and snails in its different conditions of slaked and unslaked, ground and in the lump.
And how quickly he regained his domineering manner once it was slaked, the falsehearted craven.
All along its narrow length people huddled in their tents and waited for what they had been told would come: the destroyer god, descending to earth to slake his thirst with their blood.
Megalokastro was entirely surrounded by walls and fierce, battlemented towers, which had been built by its Christian masters in the heydey of ancient Venice and had been slaked with Venetian, Turkish and Greek blood.
The water fagies were refilled from the river pool and made ready, either to slake the thirst of fighting men or to quench the flames if the Nguni latched on to the old trick of hurling lighted torches into the laager.