淹

• Pinyin: yān
• Hanzi breakdown: 淹 = 氵(water radical) + 奄 (to cover suddenly and completely — showing something enveloped and submerged by water)

Meaning

To flood; to submerge; to inundate. To cover or overwhelm with water. Can also mean to drown or to overwhelm figuratively.

Used in natural disaster contexts (洪水淹没 flooded by floodwaters), accidents (被水淹 submerged/drowned), and figurative overwhelm (淹没在人群中 swallowed up by a crowd; 淹没在工作中 buried in work). 淹没 is the most common compound form. 淹死 means to drown. The core sense is complete submersion, physical or metaphorical.

Examples

1. 暴雨持续袭击该地区整整三天，大量农田和村庄被洪水淹没，数千名居民被迫紧急转移撤离。 Torrential rain battered the region for three straight days; floods submerged large areas of farmland and villages, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate urgently.
2. 地下停车场的排水系统发生故障，短短两小时内积水便将整层车库完全淹没，损失极为惨重。 A drainage system failure in the underground parking garage meant that in just two hours, standing water completely flooded the entire level, causing extremely heavy losses.
3. 在那个信息匮乏的年代，他的声音轻易地被时代的洪流淹没，如今回头来看，他的判断几乎完全正确。 In that era of scarce information, his voice was easily drowned out by the tide of the times; looking back now, his judgment was almost entirely correct.

Usage Guide

Context: natural disasters, accidents, metaphor, news

Tone: neutral

Do Say

• 台风引发的强降雨导致河堤溃决，下游数个村庄迅速被洪水淹没，当地政府立即启动了应急预案。(The torrential rain brought by the typhoon caused the embankment to breach; several downstream villages were swiftly inundated by floodwaters, and local authorities immediately activated emergency response plans.)
• 她的呼救声被现场震耳欲聋的机器噪音完全淹没，周围的工人根本无从察觉她正处于危险之中。(Her cries for help were completely drowned out by the deafening machinery noise on site; the surrounding workers had no way of knowing she was in danger.)

Don't Say

• 淹了很多汗 — 淹 refers specifically to water or liquid flooding/submerging; for being drenched in sweat use 汗流浃背 or 大汗淋漓; using 淹 with sweat is unnatural in standard Chinese

Origin & History

淹 = 氵(water radical) + 奄 (to cover/overwhelm suddenly — phonetic and semantic, suggesting something covered over completely)

Cultural Context

Era: Classical/Modern

Generation: All ages

Social background: Universal