"off the wagon" meaning in All languages combined

See off the wagon on Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase [English]

Audio: En-au-off the wagon.ogg
Etymology: Originally off the water wagon or off the water cart, referring to carts used to hose down dusty roads: see the 1901 quotation below. The suggestion is that a person who is “on the wagon” is drinking water rather than alcoholic beverages. The term may have been used by the early 20th-century temperance movement in the United States; for instance, William Hamilton Anderson (1874 – c. 1959), the superintendent of the New York Anti-Saloon League, is said to have made the following remark about Prohibition: “Be a good sport about it. No more falling off the water wagon. Uncle Sam will help you keep your pledge.” Etymology templates: {{circa2|1959|short=yes}} c. 1959 Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} off the wagon, {{en-PP}} off the wagon
  1. (idiomatic) No longer maintaining a program of self-improvement or abstinence from an undesirable habit, especially drinking alcohol. Wikipedia link: Michael Quinion, New York Anti-Saloon League, William Hamilton Anderson, temperance movement in the United States Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Alcoholic beverages, Road transport Related terms: fall off the wagon

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for off the wagon meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.