coke

Formscokes, coking, coked

1. 1
   noun · Cokecolloquialcountable or uncountable

   Coca-Cola specifically, or more loosely any cola-flavored soft drink.

   The bar makes its rum and Coke with a squeeze of fresh lime.

   She cut back on Coke after her dentist warned her about the sugar.

   Similarcola

2. 2
   noun · Cokecolloquialcountable

   A single serving of Coca-Cola or another cola, in a bottle, glass, or can.

   She ordered a Coke for herself and a beer for her brother.

   Three empty Cokes sat on the desk next to his laptop.

   Similarcola

   Note

   J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) has a Coke ordered for a companion who doesn't drink, set against a Scotch and soda: the serving as the non-alcoholic choice. The capital is usual but not fixed, and lowercase turns up in print as well: "You have a coke and I'll have a beer," in Franklin Martin's "The Trouble with Mrs. Benton" (1958).

3. 3
   nounslanguncountable

   The drug cocaine.

   The singer later admitted that coke had nearly wrecked his career.

   Detectives say the gang moved coke through the port inside banana crates.

   Similarcocaine

   Note

   American English clipped cocaine to coke around 1908, and the short form is still slang: at home in casual speech, while formal and medical writing keep to cocaine. It takes no plural and is written in lower case, which usually keeps it apart on the page from the capitalized soft drink; in speech, only context tells them apart.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The solid residue left when coal is roasted in a coke oven, used chiefly as fuel and in making steel, and formerly as a household fuel.

   Blast furnaces use coke both as fuel and to strip oxygen from iron ore.

   Before natural gas reached the town, many households heated their homes with coke delivered by the ton.

   Note

   Nobody is sure where the word comes from: the fuel is on record from 1669, and Middle English coke, in the related sense "charcoal," turns up as early as 1430. It is a mass noun, bought by the ton rather than by the piece. It has nothing to do with the slang word for cocaine, a separate and much later word.

5. 5
   noun · CokedialectalSouthern USUScountable or uncountable

   Any soft drink, whatever its kind or flavor.

   Down in Alabama, my grandmother still asks if we want a Coke, then hands out ginger ale and grape soda.

   Y'all grab a Coke from the cooler; there's root beer, orange, and lemon-lime.

   Similarsoda, pop

   Note

   In the American South especially, the brand name has widened into the everyday word for any soft drink, so "What kind of Coke?" can fairly be answered with orange or root beer. Where this use is not at home, the same request brings a cola and nothing more, a difference worth knowing before a Southern host offers you one.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To process coal so that it becomes coke.

   Steelmakers coke high-grade coal to fuel their blast furnaces.

   The company coked coal from its own mines until the plant closed.

7. 7
   verbintransitive

   To change into coke.

   Only certain grades of coal coke well enough for steelmaking.

   Left in the oven too long, the mixture coked into a hard gray mass.

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