"Adam's ale" meaning in English

See Adam's ale in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: Attested 1643. Reference to the only drink available to Adam, the first man in the biblical tradition, while in Eden. Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} Adam's ale (uncountable)
  1. (humorous, idiomatic) Water. Wikipedia link: Adam's ale Tags: humorous, idiomatic, uncountable Categories (topical): Beverages, Water Synonyms: Adam's wine

Download JSON data for Adam's ale meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Attested 1643. Reference to the only drink available to Adam, the first man in the biblical tradition, while in Eden.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "Adam's ale (uncountable)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
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          "name": "Beverages",
          "orig": "en:Beverages",
          "parents": [
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            "Food and drink",
            "Liquids",
            "Human behaviour",
            "All topics",
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        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Water",
          "orig": "en:Water",
          "parents": [
            "Liquids",
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            "Chemistry",
            "Nature",
            "Sciences",
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            "Fundamental"
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        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2017, Fiona Farrell, Decline and Fall on Savage Street, page 59",
          "text": "She had loaded Floss into the basket, tied a sugarbag containing necessities—sketch pad, pencils, corned beef sandwiches wrapped in newsprint, a bottle of water from the garden tap, the best water, the clearest, Adam's ale — to the frame of her bicycle and set off, Floss sits up in the basket, looking ahead, though of course she can't see, but her nose is up, her world a dizzy palette of smell, as clear and bright as it is to Sybil, pedalling carefully along the river and down Fitzgerald Avenue towards the hills.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Water."
      ],
      "id": "en-Adam's_ale-en-noun-0hdTSGWU",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous, idiomatic) Water."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "Adam's wine"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
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        "idiomatic",
        "uncountable"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
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      ]
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  ],
  "word": "Adam's ale"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Attested 1643. Reference to the only drink available to Adam, the first man in the biblical tradition, while in Eden.",
  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "Adam's ale (uncountable)",
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    }
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
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        "en:Beverages",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2017, Fiona Farrell, Decline and Fall on Savage Street, page 59",
          "text": "She had loaded Floss into the basket, tied a sugarbag containing necessities—sketch pad, pencils, corned beef sandwiches wrapped in newsprint, a bottle of water from the garden tap, the best water, the clearest, Adam's ale — to the frame of her bicycle and set off, Floss sits up in the basket, looking ahead, though of course she can't see, but her nose is up, her world a dizzy palette of smell, as clear and bright as it is to Sybil, pedalling carefully along the river and down Fitzgerald Avenue towards the hills.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      "glosses": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(humorous, idiomatic) Water."
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      "synonyms": [
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        "idiomatic",
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      "wikipedia": [
        "Adam's ale"
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  ],
  "word": "Adam's ale"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.