tie one on
tie one on verb: to drink alcohol excessively, to the point of being drunk.
Verb
tie one on (third-person singular simple present ties one on, present participle tying one on, simple past and past participle tied one on)
- To drink alcohol excessively, to the point of being drunk
- "Let's tie one on!" said Peachy gaily. "Come on, Eve!"
Eve said she couldn't drink a thing. "Besides, it's fattening!"1940, Hearst's International combined with Cosmopolitan, volume 109, page 77 - Haiti […] was distressed, tropical, ramshackle, overcrowded, poor and on the brink of civil war. […] Its ornate hotels were in a state of decay, yet there was enough alcohol available for a guest to tie one on.2004 October 17, Paul Theroux, “Books: Damned Old Graham Greene”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 Sep 2010
- Synonyms:
- hang one on
- "Let's tie one on!" said Peachy gaily. "Come on, Eve!"
Synonyms of tie one on
Forms of tie one on
| third-person singular present | ties one on |
|---|---|
| present participle | tying one on |
| past participle | tied one on |
| past | tied one on |
Origin of tie one on
From earlier tie a bun on, where bun means “bender, drunken spree” and probably comes from bung. First attested in the 1940s.
Questions about tie one on
- What does tie one on mean?
- Tie one on means to drink alcohol excessively, to the point of being drunk.
- What part of speech is tie one on?
- Tie one on is a verb.
- What is the past tense of tie one on?
- The past tense of tie one on is tied one on.
Words near tie one on in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tie one on (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tie one on.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tie one on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tie_one_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.