How Do You Say Drained In Spanish? | Right Word By Context

“Drained” in Spanish is usually agotado or agotada, though vaciado and escurrido fit when something is emptied.

If you search for one neat Spanish word for “drained,” you’ll run into a snag fast: English packs a few meanings into that one word. You can feel drained after work. A battery can be drained. A pool can be drained. A can of tuna can be drained. Spanish splits those ideas apart, so the best translation shifts with the sentence.

That’s why agotado is often right, yet not always right. If you tell someone “I’m drained” after a long week, estoy agotado or estoy agotada sounds natural. If you mean a container was drained, Spanish usually moves toward vaciar, vaciado, or escurrido. Pick the wrong one and the sentence still sounds Spanish, but the meaning slides off target.

Why One Word Does Not Cover Every Case

Spanish leans harder on context than English here. “Drained” can point to tiredness, emptiness, loss, or liquid removed from food. Native speakers don’t force one blanket translation across all four. They choose the word that matches what got used up, emptied out, or wrung out.

That means your first step is simple: pause and ask what kind of drained you mean. Is it your body, your mood, your bank account, your phone battery, or a bowl of pasta after boiling? Once you pin that down, the Spanish gets much easier.

Saying Drained In Spanish By Situation

The everyday default for a person who feels drained is agotado for a man or agotada for a woman. It means exhausted, worn out, spent. You’ll hear it after a long shift, a sleepless night, a marathon study session, or an emotional blow.

Exhausto or exhausta also works, though it carries a slightly stronger, more formal feel in many settings. In casual speech, many people still reach for agotado first because it sounds natural without feeling stiff.

When the drained thing is not a person, the word often changes:

• Emotion or energy drained:agotado, sin energías, sin fuerzas
• Money drained:vaciar or dejaron la cuenta en cero
• Battery drained:sin batería or batería agotada
• Liquid drained from food:escurrido
• A tank, pool, or sink drained:vaciado or the verb vaciar

When Agotado Or Agotada Fits Best

If your sentence could be swapped with “exhausted” in English, there’s a good chance agotado is the one you want. It works for physical fatigue, mental fatigue, and that flat, wrung-out feeling after a hard day.

These are natural patterns you can use right away:

• Estoy agotado después del viaje. — I’m drained after the trip.
• Terminó agotada después de la reunión. — She finished the meeting drained.
• Me siento sin energías hoy. — I feel drained today.
• Quedé agotado emocionalmente. — I felt emotionally drained.

You can also soften or sharpen the tone with short add-ons. Agotado emocionalmente points to feelings. Sin fuerzas leans into physical weakness. Hecho polvo is a common colloquial option in parts of the Spanish-speaking world when someone is wiped out.

Meaning In English	Best Spanish Choice	Natural Example
Tired after work	agotado / agotada	Estoy agotada después del trabajo.
Mentally worn out	agotado / agotada	Salí del examen agotado.
Emotionally drained	agotado emocionalmente	Quedó agotada emocionalmente.
No energy left	sin energías / sin fuerzas	Hoy estoy sin fuerzas.
Bank account drained	vaciar	Le vaciaron la cuenta.
Phone battery drained	sin batería / batería agotada	Mi celular se quedó sin batería.
Liquid removed from canned food	escurrido	Usa atún escurrido.
Pool or tank drained	vaciado / vaciar	Ya vaciaron la piscina.

If you want a quick dictionary check while you write, Cambridge’s English-Spanish entry for “drained” lists common tiredness-related meanings, the RAE entry for agotar shows how the verb can mean both “to wear out” and “to empty,” and SpanishDict’s translation page for “drained” gives sentence-level options that are handy when you want to hear the phrase in context.

When Vaciado, Escurrido, Or Sin Batería Works Better

This is where learners often slip. They learn agotado, then use it for everything. That sounds off once the sentence moves away from people and energy.

Vaciado

Use this when something has been emptied out. A reservoir, pool, drawer, bag, or account can be vaciado. In many cases, Spanish sounds smoother with the verb instead of the adjective: vaciaron la piscina, vaciaron la cuenta, vació la botella.

Escurrido

Use this with food when liquid has been drained off. Think tuna, beans, pasta, spinach, or yogurt. A recipe might say frijoles escurridos or atún escurrido. If you say atún agotado, you’re no longer talking about food prep. You’ve wandered into nonsense.

Sin Batería

For phones, tablets, remotes, and other devices, Spanish often skips a direct adjective and just says the battery is gone: mi teléfono está sin batería or mi batería está agotada. The first one sounds more conversational in many places.

Gender, Number, And Word Order

Agotado, agotada, agotados, and agotadas all need to match the person or people you’re talking about. That part matters. Spanish speakers notice agreement right away.

• Estoy agotado. — male speaker
• Estoy agotada. — female speaker
• Estamos agotados. — mixed group or all male group
• Estamos agotadas. — all female group

Word order stays simple in most cases. Put the state after estar: estoy agotada, está vaciada, están escurridos. If you need to name the cause, tack it on after that: estoy agotada por el calor, quedó agotado después del turno doble.

Mistakes That Change The Meaning

The biggest mistake is treating “drained” as if it always meant tired. That’s fine in one sentence and wrong in the next. A drained pool is not agotada. Drained pasta is not vaciada. A drained bank account is not usually escurrida. Context runs the show.

Another common slip is translating word by word when Spanish prefers a short phrase. “My phone is drained” lands more naturally as mi teléfono está sin batería than as a clunky literal mirror of English.

If You Mean This	Say This In Spanish	Avoid This
I’m drained after work	Estoy agotado / agotada	Estoy vaciado
The account was drained	Le vaciaron la cuenta	La cuenta está agotada
The tuna is drained	El atún está escurrido	El atún está agotado
My battery is drained	Mi celular está sin batería	Mi celular está vaciado
She felt emotionally drained	Se sintió agotada emocionalmente	Se sintió escurrida

A Simple Way To Pick The Right Word

Try this fast test. If “drained” means tired, go with agotado or agotada. If it means emptied, lean toward vaciar or vaciado. If it means liquid removed from food, use escurrido. If it’s a device with no charge left, say sin batería.

That one habit will save you from most translation mistakes. It also helps your Spanish sound less textbook and more like something a person would say on the spot.

So, if someone asks, “How do you say drained in Spanish?” the cleanest answer is this: say agotado or agotada for people who feel spent, then switch to vaciado, escurrido, or sin batería when the sentence points to emptying, draining off liquid, or losing charge. The right word is tied to the scene, not just the dictionary entry.