Word.ws English Dictionary

on the water wagon

on the water wagon is the dated form of on the wagon.

Meaning of on the wagon

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Abstaining from drinking any alcoholic drink, usually in the sense of having given it up (as opposed to never having partaken); teetotal.
    • I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. 'I'm on the water-cart,' sez he.[1901, Alice Caldwell Hegan, “How Spring Came to the Cabbage Patch”, in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Project Gutenberg; EBook #4377), New York, N.Y.: Published by the Century Co., De Vinne Press...
    Synonyms:
    teetotal
    Antonyms:
    off the wagon
  2. (broadly) Maintaining a program of self-improvement or abstinence from some other undesirable habit.
    • He’s been on the smoking cessation wagon for two weeks now.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see on, the, wagon.

Questions about on the water wagon

What is on the water wagon the dated form of?
On the water wagon is the dated form of on the wagon.

Words near on the water wagon in the dictionary

  1. on the wallaby track
  2. on the wane
  3. on the warpath
  4. on the watch
  5. on the water cart
  6. on the water wagon
  7. on the way
  8. on the way out
  9. on the whole
  10. on the wind
  11. on the wing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the water wagon (page history and authors); on the wagon (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: “on the water wagon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_water_wagon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.