drink
nounEtymology From Middle English drink, drinke (also as drinche, drunch), from Old English drynċ, from Proto-Germanic *drunkiz, *drankiz. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Dronk (“drink”), Cimbrian gatrànkh (“drink”), Dutch drank, dronk (“drink”), German Getränk, trank, Trunk (“drink”), German Low German Drank, Drunk (“drink”), Vilamovian gytrenḱ (“drink”), Danish drik (“drink, beverage”), Icelandic drykkur (“drink, beverage”), Norwegian Bokmål drikk (“drink”), Norwegian Nynorsk drikk, drykk (“drink, alcohol”), Swedish dryck (“drink”), Gothic 𐌳𐍂𐌰𐌲𐌲𐌺 (draggk), 𐌳𐍂𐌰𐌲𐌺 (dragk, “drink”).
10 senses
- 1A beverage.
- 2Drinks in general; something to drink.
- 3A type of beverage (usually mixed).
- 4A (served) alcoholic beverage.
- 5The action of drinking, especially with the verbs take or have.
- 6Alcoholic beverages in general.
- 7A standard drink.
- 8Any body of water.
- 9A downpour; a cloudburst; a rainstorm; a deluge; a lot of rain.
- 10Amount.
1
A beverage.
- I’d like another drink please.
2
Drinks in general; something to drink.
- For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 25:35:
- These sources do not, however, state why the drink is called lambswool. The name comes from the way the apples are roasted until they split open, and their pulp froths over the skin; this is used to float on top of the bowl of drink.2024 September 6, Ceri Sullivan, “Shakespeare’s Will, Lambswool, and Puck’s Joke”, in Notes and Queries, volume 71, number 4, Oxford University Press, →DOI, page 406:
3
A type of beverage (usually mixed).
- My favourite drink is the White Russian.
4
A (served) alcoholic beverage.
- Can I buy you a drink?
5
The action of drinking, especially with the verbs take or have.
- He was about to take a drink from his root beer.
6
Alcoholic beverages in general.
- She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court:
- By the late twenties father has died of drink and his wife is left to raise their two sons.1979 February 10, Michael Bronski, “An American Dream”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 28, page 11:
2 more examples
- The face of work is a drunk man in the same chair, chewing on the same bone for five thousand nights. The face of work is a, coffee cup in hand, frustrated: "You don't get it. They all don't get it. You don't understand, man." Daddy's on the drink again.1995, “Daddy's on the Drink” (track 12), in Shame-Based Man, performed by Bruce McCulloch:
- […] she was indeed Amanda in the flesh: a doughty chatterbox from Ohio who adopted the manner of a Southern belle and eschewed both drink and sex to the greatest extent possible.2014 November 14, Blake Bailey, “'Tennessee Williams,' by John Lahr [print version: Theatrical victory of art over life, International New York Times, 18 November 2014, p. 13]”, in The New York Times:
7
A standard drink.
- A drink of wine is about 5 ounces
- And when (SUBJECT) was 55, would you say (he/she) drank more than, less than, or about 2 to 3 drinks a day?1963, Vital and Health Statistics: Programs and collection procedures, page 125:
8
Colloquial, With the Any body of water.
- If he doesn't pay off the mafia, he’ll wear cement shoes to the bottom of the drink!
- When in mid-Channel the speed slowed and I was informed by A.C. Russell that another dinghy had been spotted. This turned out to contain a Canadian fighter pilot who had been in the drink for three days and was in rather a bad way. He said he had seen all the aircraft flying over in the two days before D-Day and since, but no one had sighted him.1996, John French+, A Drop in the Ocean: Dramatic Accounts of Aircrew Saved From the Sea, Pen and Sword, →ISBN, page 99:
2 more examples
- In seconds, we went from sitting in a boat to threading ice-cold water. I wasn't wearing a life jacket and am not the best paddler, but there I was, in the drink, splashing around.2011, Levi Johnston, Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 34:
- If the planes couldn't make it, they would go in the drink, eject their rubber lifeboats, inflate them, climb in, and pray for the Navy to pick them up before the Germans did.2012, Jack R. Myers, Shot at and Missed: Recollections of a World War II Bombardier, University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN, page 31:
9
Australia, Figuratively A downpour; a cloudburst; a rainstorm; a deluge; a lot of rain.
- Now this is going to bring some huge totals of rainfall with it—200 to 400 millimetres with it—and along with that, these winds—gusts to 275 kilometres an hour near the cyclone [Cyclone Ilsa] core—and that's a real concern. That's very destructive winds and it's going to carry this inertia and the rain with it well inland. And we're likely going to be talking about a cyclone all the way through Friday as it slowly weakens, eventually washing that moisture out into a front going through the south. It means the southeast is getting a drink but W.A.'s northwest really copping it, individual totals significantly higher than what you're seeing here [on the weather map].2023 April 13, 07:56 am (UTC+10/AEST), in News Breakfast, season 2023, episode 74, spoken by Nate Byrne, Melbourne, Australia: ABC News:
10
Informal Amount.
- He [a sea-serpent] was giant, massive. A huge drink of man-eater. But even now, you know, I could take him.2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube:
- Synonyms
- beverage, alcoholic beverage, gulp, sip, swig
- Derived terms
81 terms
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