Word.ws English Dictionary

bathtub gin

bathtub gin noun: gin or a similar alcoholic beverage which is of very poor quality, as if made by a homebrewer in a bathtub.

Noun

bathtub gin (countable and uncountable, plural bathtub gins)

  1. (colloquial) Gin or a similar alcoholic beverage which is of very poor quality, as if made by a homebrewer in a bathtub.
    • Near-synonyms: rotgut, gut rot, hooch, swill, red-eye, moonshine
    • Part of Dallman's "Three Blind Mice" parody follows: / They called us donkey-braying cranks / But all they gave to win our thanks / Was bathtub gin and busted banks / For twelve long years.1936 June 14, “‘Dates as Usual’”, in Milwaukee Journal, retrieved 31 Jul 2013, page 2

Examples of bathtub gin in a sentence

  • A 1976 Broadway hit, "Bubbling Brown Sugar" recreates the night life of the 1920s - when they drank "scotch in teacups" and bathtub gin.1984 December 30, Alvin Klein, “‘Brown Sugar’ Done to a Bubbling Turn (theatre review)”, in New York Times, retrieved 31 Jul 2013:
  • And Wendy's on the windowsill / Waitin' to be let in / And we're all in the bathtub now / Making bathtub gin1990, “Bathtub Gin”, in Lawn Boy, performed by Phish:
  • It wasn't just the violent Prohibition-era gang wars that were dangerous to Americans drinking homemade moonshine and bathtub gin.2008 December 5, “Top 10 Prohibition Tales: Mortal Moonshine”, in Time, archived from the original on 02 Mar 2012:

Synonyms of bathtub gin

All synonyms of bathtub gin

Forms of bathtub gin

pluralbathtub gins

Questions about bathtub gin

What does bathtub gin mean?
Bathtub gin means gin or a similar alcoholic beverage which is of very poor quality, as if made by a homebrewer in a bathtub.
How do you use bathtub gin in a sentence?
A 1976 Broadway hit, "Bubbling Brown Sugar" recreates the night life of the 1920s - when they drank "scotch in teacups" and bathtub gin.
What part of speech is bathtub gin?
Bathtub gin is a noun.
What is the plural of bathtub gin?
The plural of bathtub gin is bathtub gins.

Words near bathtub gin in the dictionary

  1. bathtub
  2. bathtub cockpit
  3. bathtub cockpits
  4. bathtub curve
  5. bathtub curves
  6. bathtub gin
  7. bathtub gins
  8. bathtub racing
  9. bathtub ring
  10. bathtub rings
  11. bathtub theorem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bathtub gin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bathtub gin.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bathtub gin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bathtub_gin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.