alcoholic
Americanadjective
-
of, relating to, or of the nature of alcohol.
The fermented milk has a mildly alcoholic flavor.
-
containing or using alcohol.
The bar serves beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages.
-
caused by alcohol.
alcoholic fermentation.
-
of or like a person with alcoholism or alcohol use disorder.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to her alcoholic aunt in over a decade.
-
preserved in alcohol.
Tissue shrinking in alcoholic specimens did not affect nuclear composition.
noun
-
alcoholics
plural
noun
adjective
Sensitive Note
See addict.
Synonym Usage
See inebriate.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of alcoholic
Explanation
Something that's alcoholic contains alcohol. At a party, the host may offer a pitcher of alcoholic punch and another of non-alcoholic punch. Use alcoholic to describe something that has alcohol in it, or otherwise has to do with alcohol. Alcoholic cider, for example, is fermented, and drinking too much can be intoxicating. The noun alcoholic means a person who's dependent on alcohol, whose drinking has become compulsive and unhealthy. This meaning developed in the late 1800s, from the earlier term alcoholist. The group Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935 for alcoholics to help themselves and others quit drinking.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Also, think about whether you want to cover alcoholic drinks.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 11, 2026
The response targets various alcoholic drinks and dairy products like whey, according to a series of White House statements signed by the president.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
He also claimed that Canadian provinces had restricted sales of U.S. alcoholic beverages in response to his “emergency” tariffs last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
Senior officials last month described the planned 50% tariffs on Canada as a response to the country’s discrimination against U.S. alcoholic beverages, U.S. dairy products and U.S. motor vehicles.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 2026
The Volstead Act, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transfer of alcoholic beverages, was now the law of the land.
From "1919 The Year That Changed America" by Martin W. Sandler
I’m 26 years sober and in my experience the only people that ever teased me were alcoholics themselves.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2023
Children of alcoholics are most often on high alert trying to anticipate other people’s feelings, so they can try to head off problems or incidents before they become overwhelming.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 15, 2022
The decision not to entirely fictionalise the island was deliberate: it isn’t renamed, and there is a reference to its former owner, Frederick Charrington, a 19th-century social reformer who created a community for recovering alcoholics.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 7, 2020
But these institutions, particularly the state hospitals, soon became repositories for society’s unwanted and adrift, alcoholics, the indigent and vagrant, mixed in with those experiencing psychosis and severe mood problems.
From New York Times ● Mar. 5, 2018
When I joined the ranks of temperance workers in 1874, a thought so adventurous as that alcoholics in relation to medicine were a curse and not a blessing had never lodged within my cranium.
From Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why What Medical Writers Say by Martha Meir Allen
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
