port wine
1
3.5
- noun
- /pɔrt waɪn/
:
vino de Oporto
- a glass of port wine
Examples
-
A couple of glasses of port wine would do him far more good.
-
- You're more into port wine, right?
-
Oh, Mr Wickfield, why don't you have a big glass of port wine?
-
We sipped port wine.
Fiction book (1995) -
After dinner, we enjoyed a glass of port wine as a sweet treat.
-
The dessert was perfectly paired with a rich port wine from Portugal.
-
For a special occasion, she served her guests a fine port wine to complement the meal.
Synonyms
19
5.6
A sweet dark red wine from Portugal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is compositional: 'port' (a Portuguese fortified dessert wine) names a variety and 'wine' denotes the beverage, so a learner who knows both constituents can derive the meaning as that specific kind of wine. This type of origin- or variety-based noun compound is cross-linguistically common and therefore transparent to B1 learners.
Etymology
Port wine comes from the city of Porto, the big 'port' or harbour in Portugal where the wine was shipped from. Sailors often added a little brandy during the long sea trip to keep the wine from going bad, which made it sweeter and stronger, so today port wine means a sweet, strong dessert wine.