like a drowned rat

1. Also, wet as a drowned rat. Soaking wet and utterly bedraggled, as in When she came in out of the rain she looked like a drowned rat. This simile appeared in Latin nearly 2,000 years ago, and in English about the year 1500.

Example Sentences

As June kicks off with thunderstorms and potential flash flooding from Idaho to New York, many Americans are struggling with this commuting dilemma: How can they bike to work without showing up at the office looking like a drowned rat?

Read more on Time

“I’m going to disintegrate from here, and I’m going to look like a drowned rat.”

Read more on The New Yorker

Don’t know what the people at Catalpa Terrace will say to see me coming home looking like a drowned rat, don’t you know,” and Peter grinned in a silly, self-important way.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

What became of the other man who was thrown over, I know not; whether he swam on shore, or was drowned, or was afterwards taken into the boat, I cannot tell; but the result was, that the great, the boasting Commodore Shiel, was brought to the island a prisoner, where he landed like a drowned rat, and quite chopfallen.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

Presently our "dame" appeared, roused by the concert, and at the door received the water from the "booby trap" all over his head, and then, drenched to the skin and looking like a drowned rat, he proceeded to rout us.

Read more on Project Gutenberg