Word.ws English Dictionary

drunk tank

drunk tank noun: a cell where people who have been arrested for public drunkenness are detained until they are sober.

Noun

drunk tank (plural drunk tanks)

  1. (slang) A cell where people who have been arrested for public drunkenness are detained until they are sober.
    • [I]f you're honest enough you might end up in the drunk-tank 15 or 20 times and lose a few jobs and a wife or 2 or maybe slug somebody in the streets and sleep on a park bench now and then […].1962, Charles Bukowski, “letter”, in On Writing, Canongate, published 2016, page 57
    • It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank / An old man said to me, “Won't see another one”1987, Shane MacGowan, Jem Finer, “Fairytale of New York”, in If I Should Fall from Grace with God, performed by The Pogues ft. Kirsty MacColl

Forms of drunk tank

pluraldrunk tanks

Questions about drunk tank

What does drunk tank mean?
Drunk tank means a cell where people who have been arrested for public drunkenness are detained until they are sober.
What part of speech is drunk tank?
Drunk tank is a noun.
What is the plural of drunk tank?
The plural of drunk tank is drunk tanks.

Words near drunk tank in the dictionary

  1. drunk off
  2. drunk one's own Kool-Aid
  3. drunk out
  4. drunk someone under the table
  5. drunk something like lemonade
  6. drunk tank
  7. drunk tanks
  8. drunk text
  9. drunk texted
  10. drunk texting
  11. drunk texts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drunk tank (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-drunk tank.ogg.

Cite this entry: “drunk tank.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drunk_tank. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.