ˈwater-ˌdrinker
1. A drinker of water, one who drinks water in preference to wine or other liquors; now usually spec. a total abstainer.
| c 1440 Promp. Parv. 518/2 Water drynkare, aquebibus. 1546 J. Heywood Prov. ii. v. (1867) 59 A falser water drinker there liueth not. 1599 B. Jonson Cynthia's Rev. i. iv. 1 What! the wel-dieted Amorphus become a water-drinker? 1638 T. Whitaker Blood of Grape 31 When as water or small-beere-drinkers look like Apes rather then men. 1765 Sterne Tr. Shandy viii. v, A water-drinker, provided he is a professed one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament. 1815 Wordsw. Poems Pref. ad fin., Though myself a water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing what follows. 1882 F. M. Crawford Mr. Isaacs 7 A water-drinker in India is always a phenomenon. |
† b. In the early Christian Church, an epithet applied to those who in the celebration of the Sacrament used water instead of wine. Obs.
| 1562 [T. Cooper] Answ. Def. Truth viii. 59 Cyprian wrate against those that were called Aquarij, waterdrinkers. |
2. One who drinks the ‘waters’ at a spa.
| 1707 Jos. Browne (title), An Account of the Wonderful Cures Perform'd by the Cold Baths, With Advice to the Water Drinkers at Tunbridge, Hampstead,..and all the other Chalibeate Spaws. 1837 Dickens Pickw. xxxvi, A golden inscription [in the pump-room], to which all the water-drinkers should attend. 1889 Gretton Memory's Harkback 188 It was great fun to see the troop of water-drinkers in the early morning marching up and down..each with an empty wine-glass in hand, which from time to time they got replenished, according to the dose of mineral water prescribed for them. |