hangover

Noun

hangover (plural hangovers)

1. Negative effects, such as headache or nausea, caused by previous drunkenness due to (excessive) consumption of alcohol.
   • I really enjoyed yesterday’s party, but now I have the biggest hangover – I’ll not be doing that again any time soon.

   Synonyms:

   veisalgia

   Antonyms:

   afterglow

2. Similar negative effects caused by previous excessive consumption of another substance, such as a drug, coffee, sugar, etc.
   • Don't go overboard and find yourself with a sugar hangover that lasts for days and makes your diet days that much harder.2007, Suzanne Barnett, Jennifer Barnett Lesman, Amy Barnett Buchanan, Bev West, 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN
   • So today I walk into Dr. Singer's office with a heroin hangover, a headache like hell, vomiting, shaking, jonesing. I cannot bear to admit to her that it's come to this. I've been doing so well. But I missed therapy the whole time I was locked up […]2007, Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 4
3. (figuratively) An unpleasant relic left from prior events.
   • The one hangover from high school that colored part of my college career was the social requirement of having a boyfriend.1981 February 7, Nancy Walker, “A Gentle Guy”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 28, page 13
   • While they deny the logic of history and geography, neither Gibraltar nor the Falklands will ever be truly "safe". One day these hangovers will somehow merge into their hinterlands and cease to be grit in the shoe of international relations. This day will be hastened if world governments take...2013 August 14, Simon Jenkins, “Gibraltar and the Falklands deny the logic of history”, in The Guardian
4. (historical) A sleeping arrangement, usually in homeless shelters, over a rope.
   • At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning.1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXVII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC