Word.ws English Dictionary

drinkwater

drinkwater noun: potable water; water intended for drinking.

Noun

drinkwater (uncountable)

  1. Potable water; water intended for drinking
    • In very dry seasons some drinkwater is brought from wells dug in the bed of the river, about half-an hour from the village.1905, Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). Colonial Secretary's Dept. Local Government and Health Branch, Reports
    • “I'll come back and bring you some drinkwater," he said.1916, McClure's Magazine, volume 47
    Synonyms:
    drinking water

Adjective

drinkwater (not comparable)

  1. Small, rural, and insignificant.
    • And for a moment it seemed that everything would be all right, that we were traveling back in time to that idyllic farm near a drinkwater town in Iowa, back to my boyhood, and that Mina would always smile up at me from her bed.1972, Barry Brissman, Swing low, page 60
    • I'm surprised they have that kind of thing in a drinkwater place like this.2014, Richard Hoyt, Decoys: A John Denson Mystery, →ISBN, page 50

Proper noun capitalized: Drinkwater

Drinkwater (plural Drinkwaters)

  1. A surname transferred from the nickname.

Synonyms of drinkwater

Forms of drinkwater

pluralDrinkwaters

Origin of drinkwater

From Middle English drinkwater (attested as a nickname), equivalent to drink + water. Compare Saterland Frisian Drinkwoater (“drinkwater”), West Frisian drinkwetter (“drinkwater”), Dutch drinkwater (“drinkwater”), German Low German Drinkwater (“drinkwater”), German Trinkwasser (“drinkwater”).

From drink + water, a nickname given to a pauper or miser, unable or unwilling to afford beer; or alternatively, a nickname given to an innkeeper or a noted tippler.

Questions about drinkwater

What does drinkwater mean?
Drinkwater means potable water; water intended for drinking.
What part of speech is drinkwater?
Drinkwater can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.

Words near drinkwater in the dictionary

  1. drinksie
  2. drinksies
  3. drinkstuff
  4. drinkstuffs
  5. drinkware
  6. drinkwater
  7. Drinkwaters
  8. Drinkwine
  9. Drinkwines
  10. drinkworthy
  11. drinky

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drinkwater (page history and authors); Drinkwater (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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Cite this entry: “drinkwater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drinkwater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.