A select glossary of English words used formerly in senses different from their present

by Richard Chenevix Trench

All drery was his chere and his loking.

Chaucer, The Clerkes Tale, pt. 3.

Bowe down to the pore thin ere withoute dreryness [sine tristitiâ, Vulg.]—Ecclus. iv. 8. Wiclif.

Now es a man light, now es he hevy,

Now es he blithe, now es he drery.

Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1454.

Drench. As ‘to fell’ is to make to fall, and ‘to lay’ to make to lie, so ‘to drench’ is to make to drink, though with a sense now very short of ‘to drown;’ but ‘drench’ and ‘drown,’ though desynonymized in our later English, were once perfectly adequate to one another.

He is drenched in the flod,

Abouten his hals an anker god.

Havelok the Dane, 669.