drown the miller

English edit

Originally drown the miller's thumb, meaning to go over the specified mark.

drown the miller (third-person singular simple present drowns the miller, present participle drowning the miller, simple past and past participle drowned the miller)

(obsolete, idiomatic, slang) To put too much water in something; overdilute.
- 1821, The Economist, page 241:
  […] I tell my Bowl Friends, that our ministers have spoilt the punch. Sometimes they give us too much spirit, as when they display a vigour beyond the law; and sometimes, as we say, they drown the Miller, and make sad insipid stuff of it; again they sting our throats with acid; but it is not once in a century that we have cause to complain of an excess of sugar.