mouiller

Inherited from Old French moillier, from Vulgar Latin *molliāre (“soak”), a verb based on Latin mollis (“soft”). Compare Occitan molhar.

• IPA^(key): /mu.je/

• Audio (Paris):

  (file)

• Homophones: mouillai, mouillé, mouillée, mouillées, mouillés, mouillez
• Hyphenation: mou‧iller

mouiller

1. (transitive) to make wet, get wet, dampen, moisten
2. (transitive, cooking) to water (down)
3. (transitive, nautical) to cast, drop (anchor)
4. (transitive, linguistics) to palatalize
5. (intransitive, nautical) to anchor, lie at anchor
   • 1955, Claude Lévi-Strauss, chapter IX, in Tristes Tropiques, Plon, published 1993, →ISBN, page 90; republished as John & Doreen Weightman, transl., Tristes Tropiques, Penguin, 2011, →ISBN:

     Le 10 novembre, Villegaignon mouille dans la baie de Guanabara, où Français et Portugais se disputaient depuis plusieurs années les faveurs des indigènes.

     — On November 10th, Villegaignon anchored in the bay of Guanabara, where for several years the French and the Portuguese had been vying with each other in wooing the natives.

6. (intransitive, slang) to be so frightened as to piss oneself
7. (intransitive, slang, sex) to be wet
8. (impersonal, intransitive, Louisiana, Quebec) to rain
9. (reflexive, informal) to stick one's neck out

   Tu ne te mouilles pas trop, à ce que je vois !

   You don't stick your neck out too much, from what I see!

   (literally, “you don't get too wet”)

• mollir
• mou

• “mouiller”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.