Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A person who completely
abstains fromalcoholic beverages .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a total abstainer
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Yes, laugh as ye will, ye lovers of gin and beer and whisky, one who has tried it, and has seen it tried by hundreds of stout stalwart men, tells you that the teetotaller is the best man for real hard work.
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Everybody saw that he declined the honour when proposed, which I don't know that I ever saw a gentleman do at a commercial table till this day, barring that he was a teetotaller, which is gammon too.
Orley Farm Anthony Trollope 1848
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Bush - famed for being an alleged "teetotaller" now and an unrestrained alcoholic for some 40 years - "was seen sipping beer, but his advisers insisted it was non-alcoholic."
Archive 2007-06-01 2007
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Campbell, a teetotaller, also discloses in today's extracts that the pressure of working in Downing Street became so great that he started drinking again around the turn of the millennium.
Alastair Campbell: Blair was angry at Prince's interference 2011
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But the chief was a teetotaller, and he died, too.
CHAPTER XXI 2010
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He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
Notable & Quotable 2011
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The Welshman is a teetotaller, who does not frequent pubs or clubs.
Quiet ambition has made Tottenham's Gareth Bale world's No1 target | David Hytner 2011
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He gave Sheffield-brewed beer to US vice-president Joe Biden, a teetotaller.
Diary 2011
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Campbell, a teetotaller, also discloses in today's extracts that the pressure of working in Downing Street became so great that he started drinking again around the turn of the millennium.
Alastair Campbell: Blair was angry at Prince's interference 2011
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Whether one's partner becomes a born-again teetotaller, re-embraces their Ibiza dancing days in middle age, turns from T-bone-loving carnivore to vegan overnight or quits smoking and turns evangelical, there's nothing more annoying than one's own leopard changing spots.
thinkcharlene commented on the word teetotaller
Cheaper by the Dozen
February 14, 2007
cgrimm commented on the word teetotaller
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=teetotal&searchmode=none
"pledged to total abstinence from intoxicating drink," 1834, possibly formed from total with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-Eng.). The use in temperance jargon was first noted Sept. 1833 in a speech advocating total abstinence (from beer as well as wine and liquor) by Richard "Dicky" Turner, a working-man from Preston, England. Also said to have been introduced in 1827 in a New York temperance society which recorded a T after the signature of those who had pledged total abstinence, but contemporary evidence for this is wanting, and Webster (1847) calls teetotaler "a cant word formed in England."
February 29, 2008