Awash means covered or flooded with water, like a beach towel left too close to the waves that gets soaked when the tide comes in. A boat taking on water might have its deck awash with seawater sloshing back and forth.

The word also means overwhelmed or flooded with something other than water. After Halloween, your house might be awash with candy. A classroom could be awash in sunlight on a bright afternoon. When a company is awash in money, it has more than enough, almost more than it knows what to do with.

Notice how awash suggests being surrounded or covered, whether by actual water or by something else in abundance. If your teacher says the essays were awash with spelling errors, there were so many mistakes they seemed to flood the page. The word carries a sense of being submerged or swimming in something that’s present in large quantities.