Is There a Single Word Meaning to Provide Someone with a Drink?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Cody Gable. I’m calling from the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.

Ooh, nice.

Welcome to the show, and welcome to the Smoky Mountains. What can we do for you?

I had a question about if there is a word, a single word to say if you’re going to invite someone over, say, to your house for dinner, and you were to feed somebody and provide them with drink.

Is there a word to provide somebody with a drink other than water?

I mean, I know you water a plant and you water an animal, but can you water a person?

Good question. So eat is to feed as drink is to what?

You’re looking for a single word where we might ordinarily use a phrase.

Why the single word? Why is the phrase not good enough?

It simplifies it.

You know, it’s just hard to describe, but it’s just something that puzzled me.

And then I think other people have probably been puzzled by before.

Yeah, we’ve had this question.

Why there’s not a single word.

Yeah, you’re looking for a transitive verb for providing a drink to somebody.

And, you know, we do talk about feeding and watering animals, but it doesn’t feel the same, right, to feed and water a person.

But I don’t think we have one single word for that.

The word drench has been used a long time ago, but it usually means to give somebody liquid forcibly, like a medicine or something like that, to feed and drench.

Oh, really?

Yeah, you might talk about feeding and drenching your animals, your goats or something.

I think they do still use that in veterinarian circles.

You drench a horse.

You hold the jaw open a certain way to pour the medicine down.

Yeah, yeah, with animals.

But I don’t think there’s a really good word for that.

I’ve seen the word embeverage suggested, which I like a lot.

But that’s just because we don’t have a good word for it.

I’ve seen hydrate, but most people think of that in sports context or exertion.

Like, don’t forget to hydrate yourself.

Yeah.

But you don’t hydrate guests at a party, right?

You hydrate your skin.

You hydrate plants.

You hydrate a room.

And if you’re giving them alcohol, you’re dehydrating them.

Yeah, kind of.

So what do you think about imbeverage?

Somebody just made that up.

I think it’s kind of lovely.

Yeah, maybe we can get that to catch on.

Or maybe imbibe instead of imbibe.

Come to my house.

I will feed and imbeverage you.

I like it.

I mean, it’s kind of self-conscious and performative.

But other than that, Cody, I mean, we have not come up with a word that, a single word that substitutes for that.

Yeah, and the English language, there’s so many words, and it’s just kind of unfathomable to think that there isn’t a word for that.

I know, right?

There are a lot of those lexical holes in English because it’s not a design language.

It was accreted, so it lacks parallel constructions often.

When words are coined, people don’t necessarily also coin its opposite or its companion or its parallel.

Each one comes up on its own, has its own life.

Yeah, it’s just so odd, though, because it’s such a common thing.

It’s not like this weird esoteric thing.

Well, in many cases, when you feed, we fed our guests, it also implies drink.

Well, that’s true.

That’s a good point.

Because they go hand in hand, except in forms of punishment.

You typically provide food without some kind of liquid to drink.

That’s true.

Yeah.

Well, tell you what, Cody, we think there’s a hole here.

We agree with you that there probably isn’t a good word, but maybe in beverage we’ll catch on.

And maybe there’s something that we missed, you, me, and Martha, that our other listeners know.

And if we find out, we’ll share it to the world.

All right?

Sounds great.

Thank you for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you for having me on.

I listen every week.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Take care now.

Thanks, Cody.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got a word for Cody, a single word that means to provide drink to somebody, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.