Word.ws English Dictionary

four-ale

four-ale noun: a cheap ale, sold at fourpence per quart. Also the ellipsis of four-ale bar.

Noun

four-ale (countable and uncountable, plural four-ales)

  1. (obsolete) A cheap ale, sold at fourpence per quart
    • I ain't going to have him a-coming here any more asking me to go for his dirty pots of four-ale and screws of tobacco[…]1867, “Bill Bank's Day Out”, in Andrew Halliday, editor, The Savage-Club Papers, page 217
    • […] some of the mixture known to the working-man as "four ale," and obtained in the same locality as the porter.1888 October 13, “Adulteration”, in texts Saturday review of politics, literature, science and art, volume 66, number 1720, page 435

Also used as

four-ale is also the ellipsis of four-ale bar.

Forms of four-ale

pluralfour-ales

Phrases with four-ale

Questions about four-ale

What does four-ale mean?
Four-ale means a cheap ale, sold at fourpence per quart.
What part of speech is four-ale?
Four-ale is a noun.
What is the plural of four-ale?
The plural of four-ale is four-ales.

Words near four-ale in the dictionary

  1. four twenty
  2. four winds hat
  3. four winds hats
  4. four-acceleration
  5. four-accelerations
  6. four-ale
  7. four-ale bar
  8. four-ales
  9. four-and-nine
  10. four-and-nines
  11. four-and-twenty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: four-ale (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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