lemonade
Plurallemonades
- 1A refreshing drink made from water, lemon juice, and a sweetener, often served chilled over ice.
The diner served a tall glass of lemonade with every lunch special.
Grandma stirred sugar into the pitcher of lemonade until it dissolved.
Note
A word whose meaning depends on where it is ordered. In the US, Canada, India and the Philippines it names the juice-and-sugar drink poured from a pitcher, at home beside sweet tea on a Southern porch. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand the same word brings the clear fizzy soft drink. It came from French limonade, lemon plus -ade. Served by the glass it counts (two lemonades); in the pitcher it is a mass noun.
- 2A clear, usually fizzy drink made from lemon or artificial lemon flavoring, water, and sugar.
She topped up the children's glasses with chilled lemonade at the party.
A bottle of lemonade fizzed over when he opened it too quickly.
Note
Here the lemon can be only a flavor. The drink is clear and usually carbonated, and artificial flavoring will do. A speaker in Britain, Australia or New Zealand who asks for lemonade expects something that fizzes from a bottle or can. The line between this and the juice-and-sugar drink follows national borders, not recipes, so the same order can bring two different glasses.
- 3Recreational drugs, most often heroin, that are weak or of inferior quality.
Addicts grumbled that the lemonade going around was cut with too much filler.
He got ripped off paying full price for lemonade that barely worked.
Note
Street slang turns the harmless drink into a complaint: the stuff is as weak as a soft drink. A 1965 United States Congress appropriations hearing reports Denver addicts calling street heroin of 1 to 2 percent purity lemonade "because it is so weak." It is a sneer aimed at a supply, used as a mass noun. It belongs to users' talk, not to clinical or neutral writing.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of lemonade apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From French 'limonade', equivalent to 'lemon' combined with the suffix '-ade'.