1890–95, named after a Colonel Rickey
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Everyone gets a D.C. rickey to start, followed by a choice of four of the global drinks, complete with map, of course.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 8, 2017
My favourite is New Columbia Distillers, which has created three gins, including a spring/summer one that makes a mean gin rickey.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 29, 2015
In suggesting the rickey as the ideal drink to quench an Independence-Day thirst, I want first to stress its simplicity.
From Slate ● Jul. 3, 2014
Either way, it is clear that it is right to raise a rickey when toasting to all the glorious ideals and compromised principles of these here United States.
From Slate ● Jul. 3, 2014
What must come must come; and if it were a gin rickey rather than the slavery of the repartimento system, I'd be little enough disturbed.
From San Crist?bal de la Habana by Hergesheimer, Joseph
Would Branch Rickey come back to life to run the Pittsburgh Pirates, with autonomy and resources from ownership?
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2026
Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor helped turn the Blue Jays into two-time champions in the early 1990s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2025
The president made the remarks in response to a call by visiting American preacher Rickey Allen Bolden, who urged leaders to pursue reconciliation.
From BBC ● May 28, 2025
Rickey, all forced smiles and performative boyishness, wants to charm his way into blissful indecision, while Glenn, a classically Cera-esque misfit of unearned confidence, talks himself into an illusion of control over his destiny.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025
In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first Negro player to break the color line in baseball, when owner Branch Rickey invited him to join the Brooklyn Dodgers and integrate what was then America’s favorite sport.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
The Rat Pack goofed around here, studio moguls kept second homes, even F. Scott Fitzgerald had a house where he hammered out screenplays between gin rickeys.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2020
Unlike the Pug and Solly's, there's a cocktail menu, though gin rickeys, dark and stormies and Manhattans are as complex as the $12 drinks get.
From Washington Post
On table near body siphon of seltzer, bottle of imported limes, and glass for rickeys.
From The Silent Bullet by Reeve, Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin)
And this was still so new an aphorism to them, that they let it alone, the party breaking up over a last round of weak rickeys squeezed from the bottle.
From Rough-Hewn by Canfield, Dorothy
In a solitary corner of the vast piazza four coatless men sat idly drinking the rickeys of summer.
From V. V.'s Eyes by Harrison, Henry Sydnor
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.
