Word.ws English Dictionary

beer goggles

Syllables: beer gog·glesUK/ˈbɪə ˌɡɒɡl̩z/US/ˈbɪɚ ˌɡɑɡ(ə)l/

beer goggles noun: the illusion that people are more sexually attractive, brought on by alcohol consumption.

Noun

beer goggles pl (plural only)

  1. (humorous, idiomatic, informal, plural, plural-only) The illusion that people are more sexually attractive, brought on by alcohol consumption.
    • “Their findings essentially suggest that while intoxication may not have resulted in beer goggles, it did seem to increase liquid courage, in that people were more likely to indicate a desire to interact with attractive others,” said Monk, whose previous research had found some evidence to support...2023 August 30, Linda Geddes, “‘Beer goggles’ study finds alcohol does not make people seem better looking”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2023

Origin of beer goggles

Originally 1980s US college slang, from the notion that consumption of beer and other alcoholic beverages causes people to see things differently, as if wearing a type of goggles.

Questions about beer goggles

What does beer goggles mean?
Beer goggles means the illusion that people are more sexually attractive, brought on by alcohol consumption.
What part of speech is beer goggles?
Beer goggles is a noun.
How do you pronounce beer goggles?
Beer goggles is pronounced /ˈbɪə ˌɡɒɡl̩z/ (UK).

Words near beer goggles in the dictionary

  1. beer fridges
  2. beer garden
  3. beer gardens
  4. beer glass
  5. beer glasses
  6. beer goggles
  7. beer gut
  8. beer guts
  9. Beer Hackett
  10. beer hall
  11. beer halls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beer goggles (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-beer goggles.ogg.

Cite this entry: “beer goggles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beer_goggles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.