verb [VN]
liquid / gas
1 to take in a liquid, gas or other substance from the surface or space around:
Plants absorb oxygen. * The cream is easily absorbed into the skin. * Let the rice cook until it has absorbed all the water.
make part of sth larger
2 [oftenpassive] to make sth smaller become part of sth larger:
The surrounding small towns have been absorbed into the city. * The country simply cannot absorb this influx of refugees.
information
3 to take sth into the mind and learn or understand it:
It's a lot of information to absorb all at once. * It took me several days to absorb the fact of her death. * They spent a week in Paris just absorbing the atmosphere.
interest sb
4 to interest sb very much so that they pay no attention to anything else:
This work had absorbed him for several years.
heat / light / energy
5 to take in and keep heat, light, energy, etc. instead of reflecting it:
Black walls absorb a lot of heat during the day.
shock / impact
6 to reduce the effect of a blow, hit, etc:
This tennis racket absorbs shock on impact. * The bats have graphite shafts that absorb the vibration.
seealsoSHOCKABSORBER
money / time / changes
7 to use up a large supply of sth, especially money or time:
The new proposals would absorb $80 billion of the federal budget.
8 to deal with changes, effects, costs, etc:
The company is unable to absorb such huge losses.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for absorb is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does absorb appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — absorb appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
