watery

comparative waterier · superlative wateriest · alternative obsolete watry

1. Resembling or characteristic of water.

   The prop also gave a good watery sound to those early radio rainstorms.

   2005, Robert L. Mott, Radio Sound Effects

   Synonyms: aqueous, aquose, waterish, flowy, fluent, fluid, fluxive, free-flowing

2. Wet, soggy or soaked with water.

   European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River.

   2013 January 28, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, archived from the original on 22 Jan 2013, page 59

   Synonyms: drenched, moist, waterlogged, bewatered, damp, drenched, dripping, drunk

3. Diluted or having too much water.

   watery coffee

   Synonyms: wishy-washy

4. Thin and pale therefore suggestive of water.
5. Weak and insipid.

   Genuine music is the offspring of profound emotion: of exaltation, pain, or joy. Music produced outside of a situation between these poles of the human heart is of banal character, bloodless, watery.

   1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 194

   1 more example

   When the album succeeds, such as on the swaggering, Queen-esque “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us,” it does so on The Darkness’ own terms—that is, as a random ’80s-cliché generator. But with so many tired, lazy callbacks to its own threadbare catalog (including “Love Is Not The Answer,” a watery echo of the epic “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” from 2003’s Permission To Land), Hot Cakes marks the point where The Darkness has stopped cannibalizing the golden age of stadium rock and simply started cannibalizing itself. And, despite Hawkins’ inveterate crotch-grabbing, there was never that much meat there to begin with.

   2012 August 21, Jason Heller, “The Darkness: Hot Cakes (Music Review)”, in The Onion AV Club

   Synonyms: bland, flavorless, bland, cardboard, flaggy, flavorless, ingustible, intastable

6. Discharging water or similar substance as a result of disease etc.

   I took my cat to the vet because I was worried about his watery eyes.

7. Tearful.

   Synonyms: lachrymose, moist, teary, cryey, crysome, lachrymate, lachrymose, larmoyant

8. Containing many bodies of water.

   The good stuff in High Tide is the visual loveliness, maybe too lovely for the supposedly depressed seaport of Eden, the film's southern Australia locale. High Tide is laden with luscious pastels, watery vistas and quirky, weather-beaten clam joints.

   1988 April 16, Elizabeth Pincus, “Taming Upstart Women”, in Gay Community News, page 7