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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gimlets,
present (3rd person singular)
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gimleted,
past participle, past
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gimleting
present participle
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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
I said, like a pedestrian, "Sounds gross, like a rare form of snot. Can I order another gimlet with you?"
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2023
He looked them all over with a gimlet eye.
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
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
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 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
The cool gimlets and gin slings of the Hong Kong Club were as refreshing as the food of the great hotels was dull.
From Time Magazine Archive
Mrs. Barrows' eyes bored like old gimlets sharpened from long use.
From The Loves of Ambrose by Margaret Vandercook
There's them that can't see yit ,' and he gimleted me with a fierce eye.
From Letters of Travel (1892-1913) by Rudyard Kipling
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 Rupert Hughes
The door opened cautiously a few inches and a pair of close-set eyes in a wrinkled face gimleted Clay.
From The Big-Town Round-Up by William MacLeod Raine
Why are we ever gimleted By empire's irony?
From Citadel by H. R. van Dongen
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 William MacLeod Raine
What's the old man up to, gimleting me in the eye like that?
From Out of the Ashes by Ethel Watts Mumford
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 James Oliver Curwood
Son," he exclaimed, gimleting Wilbur with his contracted eyes; "I have reemarked as how you had brains.
From Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris
The baroness dictated the letter slowly, with an eye gimleting her daughter all the time.
From White Lies by Charles Reade
"You said twice, she was nice," put in old man Adams, his bleary, red rimmed ferret eyes gimleting at the stage driver.
From Six Feet Four by Jackson Gregory
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.
