on the wagon
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.90 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
prep_phrase
Abstaining from drinking any alcoholic drink, usually in the sense of having given it up (as opposed to never having partaken); teetotal.
prep_phrase
Maintaining a program of self-improvement or abstinence from some other undesirable habit.
prep_phrase
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see on, the, wagon.
Example Sentences
- "I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. 'I'm on the water-cart,' sez he."
- ""Where did you get all that money?" / "Went to hear Bill and climbed on the water wagon.""
- ""Sit down, bo," invited Soup Face. "I guess you're a regular all right. Here, have a snifter?" and he pulled a flask from his side pocket, holding it toward The Oskaloosa Kid. / "Thank you, but;—er—I'm on the wagon, you know," declined the youth."
- "[T]hree years later he began formally to go on the wagon: "I quit drinking three months ago, hopefully for life.""
- "In fact regularly going on the wagon is a sure indication of a serious drink problem. If they genuinely enjoy a drink, why would they even want to go a month without one? Obviously because their drinking was causing them a problem."
- "The Big Brother house guests drank liquor by the crateful. But Love Island’s tortuous trysts are fuelled by fruit juice and nosecco. Why did reality TV go on the wagon?"
Etymology
Originally on the water wagon or on 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.”