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gin rickey

gin rickey

1 7.5
A cold drink made with gin, lime juice, and fizzy water over ice
  • noun
  • /dʒɪn ˈrɪki/
translation icon : gin rickey
  • On a hot summer day, I enjoy sipping a refreshing gin rickey by the pool.

Examples

  • BUBBA, FIX ME A GIN RICKEY.

  • I ordered a Gin Rickey.

    Blog text (11)
  • WOULD YOU LIKE A GIN RICKEY?

  • Sorry, but I want to slam a couple of gin rickeys and take a nap, and I don't want to worry that your kid is going to start a tantrum just as I finally fall asleep.

    Blog text (31)
  • I'D LIKE TO HAVE A GIN RICKEY.

  • Every minute of every day you've got flies everywhere: up your nose, in your mouth, your ears, your eyes, flies in your rice, your Coke, your Singapore sling, and your gin rickey.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • Would you like a gin rickey with your dinner?

  • At the party, everyone was enjoying their gin rickeys while chatting and laughing.

Synonyms

rickey
vsgin rickey
  • US
8 9.1

A cold drink of sweetened lime juice and soda water with gin or bourbon

is the variant made with one particular liquor rather than various ones

How Alcoholic

martini
115 3.4
gin and tonic
18 2.7
gin rickey
1 7.5
shandy
1 6.0

Surface Forms

gin rickey singular
gin rickeys plural

Morphology

gin + rickey

The compound name is directly compositional: 'gin' names the spirit and 'rickey' denotes a lime-and-soda drink, so a 'gin rickey' is predictably the rickey made with gin. This follows a regular productive naming pattern for cocktails (e.g. 'vodka tonic') that is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the meaning.

Etymology

The cocktail gin rickey may be named after a Washington man called Rickey. One popular story says a bartender mixed gin with lime and fizzy water for him, and people began to call the drink by his name, so today gin rickey means a cold, refreshing drink of gin, lime, and fizzy water.