Drinkle
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To drink (an alcoholic beverage); also, to cause (someone) to drink such a beverage; to drench; to drown. transitive
"We built a fire in the huge fireplace, then sat around drinkling bootleg beer and whiskey, compliments of Joe himself, Valley High's greatest athlete."
- 2 To drink an alcoholic beverage; also, to become intoxicated; to get drunk. intransitive
"'Get this one into bed and it's a royal flush!' His face twinkled, his gums sparkled, his eyes kindled, his brow darkened. I bridled and bristled, nettled and rankled, then drinkled and drankled some more."
- 3 To drown. intransitive
"And the Mercury states that "the heavy rain drenched the field, and most betook themselves to a retreat, but the rats were all drinkled"."
Example
More examples"We built a fire in the huge fireplace, then sat around drinkling bootleg beer and whiskey, compliments of Joe himself, Valley High's greatest athlete."
Etymology
From Middle English drinklen, drinkelen, drenklen (“to plunge, drown”), from Old English *drenclian (“to drown”), frequentative form of Old English drenċan (“to give to drink, give drink to, drench, make drunk, ply with drink; soak, saturate; submerge, drown, plunge; sink”), equivalent to drink + -le and drench + -le. Compare dronkle, drunkle.
Related phrases
More for "drinkle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.