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What is the name of the sound when the last remaining drops of water are about to drain down the plug hole of a basin when the plug is removed?

Here is a sample. The last part is not loud enough for one to hear that characteristic sound.

EDIT (FF): Here's a better sound sample, where the change in tone just at the end is really clear.

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  • what you call glug is what I'm saying, do you know how is it called in the mainstream or colloquial context?
    – rraallvv
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 21:22
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    @FumbleFingers never mind, "glug" is specific enough as a search in Google suggested me, thanks very much
    – rraallvv
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 21:25
  • @FumbleFingers sure, no problem
    – rraallvv
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 21:31
  • I'm Southern UK, but here's at least one instance from Scotland: Glug glug glug, it goes down the plughole
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 21:36

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Right from when the water first starts to suck air into the eddy going down a plug-hole, the sound it makes is gurgling - defined by OED as the noise made by liquid escaping intermittently from a vessel.

Personally, I call the sound made at the very end a glug (OED: a word formed to imitate an inarticulate sound).

Glug functions as a verb, as well as a noun. Obviously, if water glugs, that just means the water is making that sound. But in another common usage, to glug means to drink (often, the last drops of) something noisily and/or hastily - glug the last dregs in a glass of beer, for example.

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  • Gah. Major semantic satiation on "glug" by the time I read this all the way through. :)
    – Marthaª
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 22:44
  • @Martha: If you're down the pub with "drinking buddies" in the UK, and someone is just about to get another round of beers in, he might well hold your almost-finished glass in front of you and say "Glug that!".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 22:51

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