barfly
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of barfly
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:
One disappointed man with a Gallrein sticker walked out, while a lone barfly looked at a broadcast of a PGA golf tournament.
From Slate ● May 19, 2026
George Wendt, the actor best known for his starring role as perpetual barfly Norm Peterson through the full run of the NBC sitcom ‘Cheers,’ has died at 76.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2025
A daughter of Washington, D.C.’s Black bourgeoisie, Horn often attired herself in furs and white gloves, but she could outlast even the hardiest barfly as the night wore on.
From New York Times ● Apr. 3, 2024
The latter, released in November 1949, was a sweet tribute to the barfly regulars at that friendly venue.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 10, 2023
And it should have been obvious to me, maybe not that he was an Executive Special, but that he was certainly no drunken barfly.
From Four-Day Planet by Piper, H. Beam
In Crescent City, a remote Northern California harbor town where tsunamis are a way of life, the Tuesday evening barflies gathered at Port O’Pints Brewing Co. were decidedly blasé about the possibility of impending disaster.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2025
They always exerted a gravitational pull on the clotheslines and barflies and flyswatters and carpenters and Donalds and Lydias and other earthly things that populated the extended John Prine universe.
From Slate ● Apr. 8, 2020
Alternately rousing and yearning, this is a gorgeous hymn to barflies, precious memories and the joys of being a ghost, told with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe and Thelonious Monk.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 23, 2020
In fabricating their hopeful visions of their hopeless lives, O’Neill’s barflies are always performing, for themselves as well as the others.
From New York Times ● Apr. 26, 2018
He pushed his way past the man in Space Grays and shouldered past a couple of barflies as he left.
From Postmark Ganymede by Silverberg, Robert
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.
