soaked to the skin

wet clear through one's clothing to the skin. I was caught in the rain and got soaked to the skin. oh, come in and dry off! You must be soaked to the skin.

to be extremely wet I forgot my umbrella and got soaked to the skin when I had to go out this afternoon.

Also, soaked through. Drenched, extremely wet, as in What a downpour; I'm soaked to the skin, or She fell in the stream and was soaked through. The implication in this idiom implies that water has penetrated one's clothing, so one is thoroughly wet. The phrase to the skin has been so used since about 1600; it and the variant were combined in Randle Cotgrave's Dictionary (1611) as "Wet through, or (as we say) to the skin."