Word.ws English Dictionary

cocktail flu

cocktail flu noun: a hangover or other negative symptoms experienced the day after ingesting alcohol.

Noun

cocktail flu (uncountable)

  1. (colloquial) A hangover or other negative symptoms experienced the day after ingesting alcohol.
    • There were, of course, the hangovers. Mornings we’d wake up late, stumble to Veselka or Café Orlin in the East Village for something greasy and restorative, then trundle home to collapse on the sofa, felled by the cocktail flu, giving us permission to watch basketball doubleheaders and doze all day...2012, “A Glass Half Empty”, from “Modern Love” in The New York Times by Elissa Schappell, 2012-08-17

Origin of cocktail flu

From cocktail + flu.

Questions about cocktail flu

What does cocktail flu mean?
Cocktail flu means a hangover or other negative symptoms experienced the day after ingesting alcohol.
What part of speech is cocktail flu?
Cocktail flu is a noun.

Words near cocktail flu in the dictionary

  1. cocktail bars
  2. cocktail cabinet
  3. cocktail cabinets
  4. cocktail dress
  5. cocktail dresses
  6. cocktail flu
  7. cocktail fork
  8. cocktail forks
  9. cocktail frank
  10. cocktail frankfurter
  11. cocktail frankfurters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cocktail flu (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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