gimlet
/ˈɡɪm.lət/
gimlet noun: a small screw-tipped tool for boring holes.
Noun
gimlet (plural gimlets)
- A small screw-tipped tool for boring holes.
- The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet holes to let in air.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part II (A Voyage to Brobdingnag)
- I would find by the edge of that water / The collar-bone of a hare / Worn thin by the lapping of water, / And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare [...]1917 November, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, “The Collar-bone of a Hare”, in The Wild Swans at Coole, Other Verses and a Play in Verse, Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: The Cuala Press, →OCLC, page 3
- A cocktail, usually made with gin and lime juice.
- We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets. “They don't know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis...1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, published 2002, page 19
- Yeah, a piece of advice — once you’re back in circulation, don’t keep topping off a lady’s vodka gimlet when she’s not looking.2001, General Hospital (TV soap opera, August 28)
Verb
gimlet (third-person singular simple present gimlets, present participle gimleting or gimletting, simple past and past participle gimleted or gimletted)
gimlet meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Sanskrit and Persian
gimlet in Tamil
- தமர், துளையூசி, சிறு தமரூசி, சிறுதமரூசி
gimlet in Malayalam
- മദ്യമിശ്രിതം, തമര്, തിരുവുളി
gimlet in Sanskrit
- a gimlet or auger L
- भ्रम bhrama
gimlet in Persian
- tool
- مته matte
Examples of gimlet in a sentence
- We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets.1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, published 2002, page 19:
- By seven, dinner was under way, and a bottle of vodka gimlets and one of martinis were in the freezer, chilling.2012, Stuart Woods, Unnatural Acts: A Stone Barrington Novel, Penguin, →ISBN, page 98:
Forms of gimlet
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | gimlets |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | gimlets |
| present participle | gimleting |
| present participle | gimletting |
| past participle | gimleted |
| past | gimleted |
| past participle | gimletted |
| past | gimletted |
Origin of gimlet
From Middle English gimlet etc., from Old French guinbelet, guimbelet, guibelet, probably a diminutive of the Anglo-Norman wimble, a variation of guimble (“drill”), from the Middle Low German wiemel; continued in Modern French as gibelet. Cocktail either named after the tool, in reference to its penetrating effects, or British Navy surgeon Thomas Gimlette (1857–1943).
Words formed from gimlet
Words that rhyme with gimlet
Questions about gimlet
- What does gimlet mean?
- Gimlet means a small screw-tipped tool for boring holes.
- What is gimlet in Tamil?
- Gimlet in Tamil is தமர், துளையூசி, சிறு தமரூசி. See Gimlet meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use gimlet in a sentence?
- We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets.
- What part of speech is gimlet?
- Gimlet can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce gimlet?
- Gimlet is pronounced /ˈɡɪm.lət/ (UK).
- What is the plural of gimlet?
- The plural of gimlet is gimlets.
Words near gimlet in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gimlet (page history and authors); gimlet (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gimlet (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); भ्रम (Sanskrit) (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)-Vealhurl-gimlet.wav.
Cite this entry: “gimlet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gimlet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.