Meaning of Cocktail | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A mixed alcoholic beverage.
2. A mixture of other substances or things.
   broadly
3. A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.
4. A mean, half-hearted fellow.
   UK, dated, slang
5. A species of rove beetle, so called from its habit of elevating the tail.

Equivalents

Examples

“They visited a bar noted for its wide range of cocktails.”

“[...] a certain candidate has placed in his account of Loss and Gain, the following items:-- LOSS [...] 411 glasses bitters[,] 25 do. cock-tail”

“Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head.”

“Deane opened the fray by declaring, à propos of dinners, that the only proper way to create a cocktail of the genus Martini was to add a half-spoonful of sherry after the other ingredients had been satisfactorily mixed, if at all.”

“He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon.”

“The cocktail in Britain is a rigidly-defined social institution: each has its own particular meaning—the G & T is the alcoholic equivalent of the interview suit; Pernod and black is an alternative to glue sniffing for repentant trendies, etc.”

“Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.”

“a cocktail of illegal drugs”

“Motor vehicles, for example, emit a cocktail of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulates, heavy metals and (for diesel) sulphur dioxide.”

“This chapter examines how the concurrent phenomena of an assertive monarch, persistent civil war, and economic change affected the political activities of townspeople in three ways: in the relationship between the ‘urban sector’ and the English polity, in the complexion of municipal internal politics, and in the nature of urban participation in the civil wars of 1469–71. In all three of these fields, the particular cocktail of circumstances present in the 1460s encouraged a wide variety of townspeople to become invested emotionally and materially in the course of national politics, as they had not been during much of the 1450s.”

“Terry Gourvish, the lead author if the authorised commercial history of BR, described the new BTC structure thus: "The conclusion must be that the combination of a few undynamic railwaymen, underpaid full-timers (Commission and General Staff) and poorly-paid part-time businessmen was not a very potent managerial cocktail."”

“A “cock-tail” is a horse not purely bred, but with only one-eighth or one-sixteenth impure blood in his veins”

“It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.”

CEFR level