Word.ws English Dictionary

six o'clock swill

six o'clock swill noun: the last-minute rush to buy alcohol at a bar before it closed at 6pm.

Noun

six o'clock swill (uncountable)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, historical) The last-minute rush to buy alcohol at a bar before it closed at 6pm.
    • Licensing laws in Australia were finally relaxed in 1967, bringing an end to the infamous six o'clock swill and encouraging people to eat out.2003, Nicholas Faith, chapter 7, in Australia's Liquid Gold, Hachette UK, →ISBN
    • The six o'clock swill was the male ritual of consuming as many beers as possible in the hour before hotels and pubs closed at six o'clock. Early closing was introduced during World War One, when wartime patriotism and austerity and a general temperance mood impelled its introduction.2007, D. Kirkby, T. Luckins, Dining On Turtles: Food Feasts and Drinking in History, Springer, →ISBN, page 93

Questions about six o'clock swill

What does six o'clock swill mean?
Six o'clock swill means the last-minute rush to buy alcohol at a bar before it closed at 6pm.
What part of speech is six o'clock swill?
Six o'clock swill is a noun.

Words near six o'clock swill in the dictionary

  1. Six Mile Bottom
  2. Six Mile Swamp
  3. Six Nations
  4. Six Nations of the Grand River
  5. six o'clock
  6. six o'clock swill
  7. six of one, half a dozen of the other
  8. six of the best
  9. six pack
  10. six packs
  11. six penny nail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: six o'clock swill (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-six o'clock swill.ogg.

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