bidon

Noun

bidon (plural bidons)

1. A bottle or flask for holding a beverage such as water or wine; (specifically, sports) a water bottle which can be squeezed to squirt the beverage out of the nozzle, especially (cycling) one designed for mounting on a bicycle.
   • I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors, knife in hand, were consuming their meat and bread, occasionally tilting their bidons on high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. […] The older [man] appeared pleased with my appetite; his face softened still more, as he...1922, E[dward] E[stlin] Cummings, “A Pilgrim’s Progress”, in The Enormous Room, New York, N.Y.: Boni and Liveright, →OCLC, page 48
   • […] Bram De Groot, a domestique with the Dutch Rabobank team, drops out the back, one arm in the air. The team car responds instantly, swinging out of the line of support vehicles behind the peloton and racing, klaxon sounding, up to De Groot. The window opens and a hand emerges with a bidon...2006 July 15, “Tour de France 2006: Life is rarely dull among the bottle-carriers and peloton pushers”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived...
2. (archaic) A cup made of wood.
   • ["]Take a draught of my burgundy; bright as rubies. I never sell bad wines;—not I!—I know better than to drink them myself." He started and rose; and before he took the bidon [footnote †: “Little wooden drinking-cup.”], bowed to her, raising his cap with a grave courteous obeisance; a bow that had...1867, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “L’Amie du Drapeau”, in Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 13–14
   • He took the bowl [containing red wine with bread broken in it] from her hands, and emptying a little of it into the wooden bidon that hung to her belt, kept that for himself, and stretching his arm across the straw, gave the bowl to Zackrist, who had watched it with the longing ravenous eyes of a...1867, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], “The Leathern Zackrist”, in Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert. […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 53–54
3. (archaic) An oil drum; a petrol can.
   • I saw that she had picked up an empty oil bidon that had been lying in the corner. I had bought it weeks before, for an oil lamp I had before I sold my things. […] They always make you pay a deposit on the bidon, and you get it back when the bidon is returned. But I'd forgotten all about it. […]...1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XV, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, pages 115–116

   Synonyms:

   jerrycan