Word.ws English Dictionary

wet one's whistle

wet one's whistle verb: to have a drink; to quench one's thirst.

Verb

wet one's whistle (third-person singular simple present wets one's whistle, present participle wetting one's whistle, simple past and past participle wet one's whistle or wetted one's whistle)

  1. (idiomatic) To have a drink; to quench one's thirst.
    • I'll take another glass of the sherry wine, just to wet my whistle, as the vulgar saying is, before I begin.1876, Wilkie Collins, chapter 9, in The Two Destinies
    Synonyms:
    wet one's beak

Synonyms of wet one's whistle

Forms of wet one's whistle

third-person singular presentwets one's whistle
present participlewetting one's whistle
past participlewet one's whistle
pastwet one's whistle
past participlewetted one's whistle
pastwetted one's whistle

Questions about wet one's whistle

What does wet one's whistle mean?
Wet one's whistle means to have a drink; to quench one's thirst.
What part of speech is wet one's whistle?
Wet one's whistle is a verb.
What is the past tense of wet one's whistle?
The past tense of wet one's whistle is wet one's whistle.

Words near wet one's whistle in the dictionary

  1. wet nurses
  2. wet nursing
  3. wet one's beak
  4. wet one's clay
  5. wet one's pants
  6. wet one's whistle
  7. wet oneself
  8. wet out
  9. wet pack
  10. wet packs
  11. wet pail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wet one's whistle (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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