Word.ws English Dictionary

hit the bottle

hit the bottle verb: to drink alcohol steadily and in excess, particularly in response to a setback.

Verb

hit the bottle (third-person singular simple present hits the bottle, present participle hitting the bottle, simple past and past participle hit the bottle)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To drink alcohol steadily and in excess, particularly in response to a setback.
    • He's been hitting the bottle hard since his wife left him.
    Synonyms:
    hit the booze, hit the sauce

Synonyms of hit the bottle

Forms of hit the bottle

third-person singular presenthits the bottle
present participlehitting the bottle
past participlehit the bottle
pasthit the bottle

Questions about hit the bottle

What does hit the bottle mean?
Hit the bottle means to drink alcohol steadily and in excess, particularly in response to a setback.
What part of speech is hit the bottle?
Hit the bottle is a verb.
What is the past tense of hit the bottle?
The past tense of hit the bottle is hit the bottle.

Words near hit the bottle in the dictionary

  1. hit the accelerator
  2. hit the ball twice
  3. hit the big time
  4. hit the board
  5. hit the books
  6. hit the bottle
  7. hit the bricks
  8. hit the buffers
  9. hit the button
  10. hit the ceiling
  11. hit the deck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hit the bottle (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hit the bottle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hit the bottle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hit_the_bottle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.