gimlet
Americannoun
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a small tool for boring holes, consisting of a shaft with a pointed screw at one end and a handle perpendicular to the shaft at the other.
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a cocktail made with gin or vodka, sweetened lime juice, and sometimes soda water.
verb (used with object)
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to pierce with or as if with a gimlet.
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Nautical. Also gimblet to rotate (a suspended anchor) to a desired position.
adjective
noun
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a small hand tool consisting of a pointed spiral tip attached at right angles to a handle, used for boring small holes in wood
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a cocktail consisting of half gin or vodka and half lime juice
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a eucalyptus of W Australia having a twisted bole
verb
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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gimletsimple
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gimletssimple
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have gimletedperfect
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has gimletedperfect
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am gimletingprogressive
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are gimletingprogressive
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is gimletingprogressive
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have been gimletingperfect progressive
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has been gimletingperfect progressive
Past
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gimletedsimple
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had gimletedperfect
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was gimletingprogressive
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were gimletingprogressive
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had been gimletingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of gimlet
1375–1425; late Middle English < Old French guimbelet < Germanic; compare Middle Dutch wimmel wimble
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:
But the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland keeps a gimlet eye on inflation data, and it has some estimates.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 19, 2025
His Napoleon views the world with a gimlet eye and firmly compressed lips.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2023
You can’t help but be invigorated by Klein’s intellectual synthesis and dexterity, even as her gimlet eye makes you want to run screaming into the night.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2023
If you order a gimlet and they offer you, Roses, then you should leave the bar, maybe even the neighborhood, because that is ridiculous as it is gross.
From Salon ● May 8, 2023
It was as though a sharp little gimlet had rim into the solid congealed mess of Emily Brent's brain.
From "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie
At the Bellagio, gimlets bloomed with the scent of elderflower liqueur, and in Brooklyn they burned with cinnamon and habanero.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2013
In the third chapter, Marlowe narrates the early flourishing of something like friendship, and Lennox pines for a foreign tradition: We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2013
In its cool dark depths are the steaks in a covered dish of honey-ginger marinade, the potato salad and coleslaw she put up after breakfast, and the Rose’s lime juice and vodka for the gimlets.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 11, 2010
And there on the porch they all were sipping their gimlets and chota pegs�and they asked me what was happening in town and was it serious!
From Time Magazine Archive
Phonny next showed his gimlets, and his augers, and his bits and bit-stocks.
From Stuyvesant A Franconia Story by Abbott, Jacob
You know how unimportant your cuts are in the fall when you know that you can skip classes ten times that year without getting called up on the green carpet and gimleted by the Faculty.
From At Good Old Siwash by Fitch, George
It lay, too, in the glitter of the cold eyes that gimleted mine sharply.
From The Pirate of Panama A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure by Raine, William MacLeod
The chill eyes of Goodheart gimleted into those of his assistant.
From A Man Four-Square by Raine, William MacLeod
Why are we ever gimleted By empire's irony?
From Citadel by Dongen, H. R. van
He gimleted all over the space back of the plate before he finally made out the ball coming to earth many feet in front of him.
From The Dozen from Lakerim by Hughes, Rupert
We all sat cross-legged round our meal, and all Laupahoehoe crowded into the room and verandah with the most persistent, unwinking, gimleting stare I ever saw.
From The Hawaiian Archipelago by Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy)
Son," he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eyes; "I have reemarked as how you had brains.
From Moran of the Lady Letty by Norris, Frank
Blake's eyes, gimleting to her soul, were shot with a sudden fire as he, too, leaned a little over the table.
From Back to God's Country and Other Stories by Curwood, James Oliver
“Can’t seem to find out,” admitted the landlord, and the young man bestowed on Brophy an expansive grin which was a comment on the latter’s well-known penchant for gimleting in search of information.
From Joan of Arc of the North Woods by Day, Holman
The baroness dictated the letter slowly, with an eye gimleting her daughter all the time.
From White Lies by Reade, Charles
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.
