Word.ws English Dictionary

Death in the Afternoon

Death in the Afternoon noun: an alcoholic cocktail made with absinthe, champagne, and sometimes a twist of lemon.

Noun

Death in the Afternoon (plural Death in the Afternoons)

  1. An alcoholic cocktail made with absinthe, champagne, and sometimes a twist of lemon.
    • “I'll do a Death in the Afternoon.” “Are you going to commit to the drink?” She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. “Yes, repeated four times.” Bryan smiled, “Okay.” “You seem surprised.” “No, just impressed.”(Can we date this quote?), Jesse Luke, The Abyss Gazes Back, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 82
    • I made three drinks—the first one was a “Death in the Afternoon”—a straightforward drink with absinthe and champagne, but one that gave me the chance to explain the science behind effervescence.2013 February 24, Kevin Liu, Craft Cocktails at Home: Offbeat Techniques, Contemporary Crowd-Pleasers, and Classics Hacked with Science, Kevin Liu, →ISBN, page 70

Examples of Death in the Afternoon in a sentence

  • One of the servers swooped into the study and offered me a Death in the Afternoon.2015 March 20, Mimi Sebastian, The Necromancer's Redemption, ImaJinn Books, →ISBN:
  • “Then I have just the drink for you—two Death in the Afternoons coming up.” As he walked away, I swung around to study the dance floor.2019 December 25, Keri Arthur, The Lizzie Grace Boxed Set: Books 1-3, KA Publishing PTY LTD, →ISBN:

Forms of Death in the Afternoon

pluralDeath in the Afternoons

Origin of Death in the Afternoon

Invented by Ernest Hemingway (the recipe was first published in 1935) and given the same name as his 1932 book Death in the Afternoon.

Questions about Death in the Afternoon

What does Death in the Afternoon mean?
Death in the Afternoon means an alcoholic cocktail made with absinthe, champagne, and sometimes a twist of lemon.
How do you use Death in the Afternoon in a sentence?
One of the servers swooped into the study and offered me a Death in the Afternoon.
What part of speech is Death in the Afternoon?
Death in the Afternoon is a noun.
What is the plural of Death in the Afternoon?
The plural of Death in the Afternoon is Death in the Afternoons.

Words near Death in the Afternoon in the dictionary

  1. death growls
  2. death grunt
  3. death grunts
  4. death house
  5. death houses
  6. Death in the Afternoon
  7. death instinct
  8. death instincts
  9. death is the great leveller
  10. death kit
  11. death kits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Death in the Afternoon (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Death in the Afternoon.wav.

Cite this entry: “Death in the Afternoon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death_in_the_afternoon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.