gimlet
English
Etymology
From the Old French guinbelet, guimbelet, later guibelet, probably a diminutive of the Anglo-French wimble, a variation of guimble (“drill”), from the Middle Low German wiemel, compare the Scandinavian wammie, to bore or twist; the modern French is gibelet. [1]
Cocktail either named after the tool, in reference to its penetrating effects, or British Navy surgeon Gimlette.[2]
Pronunciation
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Noun
gimlet (plural gimlets)
- A small screw-tipped tool for boring holes.
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- 1917 November, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “The Collar-bone of a Hare”, in The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse, Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: The Cuala Press, →OCLC, page 3:
- I would find by the edge of that water / The collar-bone of a hare / Worn thin by the lapping of water, / And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare [...]
- A cocktail, usually made with gin and lime juice.
- Coordinate term: martini
- 1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, published 2002, page 19:
- We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets. “They don't know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”
- 2001, General Hospital (TV soap opera, August 28):
- Yeah, a piece of advice — once you’re back in circulation, don’t keep topping off a lady’s vodka gimlet when she’s not looking.
- 2012, Stuart Woods, Unnatural Acts: A Stone Barrington Novel, Penguin (→ISBN), page 98:
- By seven, dinner was under way, and a bottle of vodka gimlets and one of martinis were in the freezer, chilling.
Derived terms
Translations
tool
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cocktail
Verb
gimlet (third-person singular simple present gimlets, present participle gimleting or gimletting, simple past and past participle gimleted or gimletted)
- To pierce or bore holes (as if using a gimlet).
- (nautical, transitive) To turn round (an anchor) as if turning a gimlet.
Translations
To pierce or bore holes (as if using a gimlet)
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Further reading
References
- ^ John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “gimlet”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.
- ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “gimlet”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.