Word.ws English Dictionary

hitting the bottle

hitting the bottle is the present participle and gerund of hit the bottle.

Meaning of hit the bottle

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

Questions about hitting the bottle

What is hitting the bottle the present participle and gerund of?
Hitting the bottle is the present participle and gerund of hit the bottle.

Words near hitting the bottle in the dictionary

  1. hitting someone when they are down
  2. hitting the accelerator
  3. hitting the big time
  4. hitting the board
  5. hitting the books
  6. hitting the bottle
  7. hitting the bricks
  8. hitting the buffers
  9. hitting the button
  10. hitting the ceiling
  11. hitting the deck

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitting the bottle (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “hitting the bottle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitting_the_bottle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.