I was recently searching for something, when I came across the phrase “slopping wet”.
A Google search shows nearly 50,000 results for the phrase if you have it in quotes. Here are some of the examples:
- I felt a great slopping wet shadow come over me.
- No slopping wet concrete on the sides or at the base of the blocks.
- Imagine the damp pungent odor of slopping wet muck at a stagnant pond.
- I’m sure it’s slopping wet underneath
But this usage is actually incorrect.
Instead of slopping, you want to use sopping.
The word sop means to soak up something, like you would do with a sponge or paper towel, or perhaps at a meal when you might use bread to pick up sauce on your plate.
It’s actually nearly 1,000 years olde and first started out referring to bread soaked in water, wine, or other liquid.
When you think about it, slopping kind of makes sense. The word does have a liquid connotation, referring both to liquids spilling out of a container and to waste water from a home that has to be emptied by hand.
But, as I said, the phrase you want is sopping wet, not slopping wet.
