an aromatic wine made from Furmint grapes grown in the district surrounding Tokay, a town in NE Hungary.
Horticulture.
a large, red variety of grape, grown for table use.
the vine bearing this fruit, grown in California.
a sweet, strong white wine made in California.
a fine sweet wine made near Tokaj, Hungary
a variety of large sweet grape used to make this wine
a similar wine made elsewhere
1745–55; < dialectal Malay tokeʔ < Javanese təʔkəʔ (spelling tekek)
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Those of you who enjoy a bit of English literature might recognize Tokaji under its Anglicized name, tokay, which aristocrats like to swizzle in period romances and gaslit murder mysteries.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 23, 2023
The BBC, by contrast, is seeing the epic drama through from the opening glass of tokay to the concluding moment, when Lyra's daemon mutates into a pine marten.
From BBC ● Nov. 9, 2020
The sound of one gecko is even embedded in its name: Male tokay geckos, from Asia, make a loud, persistent mating call, “tokay-tokay!”
From National Geographic ● Oct. 24, 2015
Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Tsukamoto had not been close, and Mr. Fletcher had no experience growing the farmers’ specialty, flame tokay grapes, but he accepted the offer and soon quit his job.
From New York Times ● Jun. 6, 2013
Bernabe had bought it off the distinguished sculptor for a bottle of cheap tokay twelve years ago.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
Over the past few years, for example, Indonesia granted companies permission to export around three million captive-bred Tokay geckos annually.
From New York Times ● Apr. 9, 2018
“Your Tokay what you ordered. Would you like me to make up the fire? It’s ever so cold in here.”
From Slate ● May 26, 2017
Of course it is, yet bad taste was Zsa Zsa’s Tokay.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 18, 2016
After World War Two, Zahava Szasz Stessel in the book "Wine and thorns in Tokay Valley" recounts how survivors returned home to find their houses occupied and their possessions taken.
From Reuters ● Jul. 22, 2016
King Ogunwe poured the golden Tokay and handed him the glass.
From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman
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.
