soak up the shower of confetti and cheers

I read a passage about winning a sport game. People celebrated the success of a team. And there is this line:

Chen was watching backstage as the team hoisted the trophy, soaking up the shower of confetti and cheers in the stadium.

Can native speakers translate the bolded sentence into a plain language sentence?

What does each of these words mean: soak up, shower, confetti and cheers?

I'm going to assume that "the shower of confetti and cheers" refers to the physical.

Confetti these days, at least in the UK, consists of large quantities of tiny pieces of paper. When thrown high in the air they flutter down. In the UK we associate confetti with weddings. The bride and groom are showered with confetti as they leave the church. Traditionally, I believe in some countries and for certain celebrations, the confetti was rice.

The word confetti also relates to "small sweets", I believe from the latin (I am not a student of Latin, be warned). We see this here in Spain when we celebrate "Los Reyes", The Kings. In every village, town, district, etc, on the 5th of January, there will be a procession. The parade participants will throw thousands of small sweets into the crowds. The children will pick up as many as they can.

Cheers are the sounds that the crowd shout in celebration of their hero(es). When your team scores a goal, you cheer to show your appreciation, to celebrate, and to participate.

So this is all about celebration. Sadly, Chen seems merely to be an observer and not a participant.

I hope that helps, or at least stimulates further research.

I guess they were showered with things to celebrate their triumph.

kachibibb said:

I read a passage about winning a sport game. People celebrated the success of a team. And there is this line:

Chen was watching backstage as the team hoisted the trophy, soaking up the shower of confetti and cheers in the stadium.

Can native speakers translate the bolded sentence into a plain language sentence?

What does each of these words mean: soak up, shower, confetti and cheers?

Click to expand...

You said it yourself. It's a celebration.

the team hoisted the trophy - they held it up in the air
soaking up the shower of cheers and confetti - the crowd cheered and threw confetti

In fact, you need to understand the sentence as a whole -- not take it apart.