the.com/drowning
the quiet killer that kills without thrashing, screaming, or warning anyone you're dying.
means The act of dying or nearly dying from suffocation after the lungs fill with water or other liquid; also, figuratively, being overwhelmed by something.
from From Middle English 'drounen,' to drown — likely related to Old English 'druncnian,' meaning to be swallowed up by water or to sink. It shares a deep family resemblance with 'drink' and the old Germanic words for being soaked or saturated, the same root cluster that gave us 'drunk' — a body overcome by liquid, whether the sea or the bottle. The shift from 'druncnian' to 'drounen' to 'drown' smoothed out over centuries of English mouths, but the grim sense never changed: to go under and not come back up.
- deadly silence
- Real drowning is silent, not the splashy panic in movies
- instinctive response
- Victims can't wave or yell, only press water down
- 20 seconds
- Adults sink within a minute, children in seconds
- dry variety
- Some drown from spasms, no water in lungs
- survivable death
- Cold-water victims revived after an hour underwater
titanic sinking 1912 — 1,500 people drowned when the ship hit an iceberg in the north atlantic
bhola cyclone 1970 — 300,000+ deaths in east pakistan, majority by drowning from storm surge in the ganges delta