milkshake

Pluralmilkshakes

Formsmilkshakes, milkshaking, milkshaked

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A thick beverage made by mixing milk and ice cream together, often with fruit, chocolate, or other flavoring.

   He blended a thick vanilla milkshake using two scoops of ice cream.

   Children lined up at the counter for milkshakes after the game.

   Similarshake

2. 2
   noundialectalAustraliaNew EnglandNew Zealandcountable

   A thin beverage like the thicker shake but containing no ice cream, or significantly less of it.

   The cafe serves a runny milkshake that pours like cold chocolate milk.

   Some shops sell thin milkshakes with barely a spoonful of ice cream.

   Note

   A regional usage of New England, Australia and New Zealand, where a milkshake can be a thin drink with little or no ice cream. Elsewhere the word promises the thick ice-cream drink, so the same order can bring two very different glasses. When writing for a mixed audience, say thick or thin, or mention the ice cream, rather than trusting the word alone.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A beverage made from fruit juice, water, and some milk, as served in Southeast Asia.

   The hawker stall blended a milkshake from fresh papaya juice, water, and a little milk.

   Across the region, milkshakes often taste more like fruit juice than dessert.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialcountable

   An accidental emulsion of oil and water that forms inside an engine.

   He spotted a milkshake on the dipstick and suspected a blown head gasket.

   Oil and coolant had mixed into a gray milkshake inside the engine.

   Similaremulsion, sludge

   Note

   A mechanic's informal name for a bad sign, borrowed from the look of the drink. It collects under the oil cap or on the dipstick when water or coolant gets into the oil, and the classic diagnosis is a blown head gasket. In shop talk you find a milkshake on the dipstick. In a written service report, emulsified oil is the safer term.

5. 5
   verbcolloquialneologismtransitive

   To target someone by deliberately throwing a milkshake at them.

   Activists threatened to milkshake the politician at every campaign stop.

   A bystander milkshaked the minister outside the town hall.

   Note

   A neologism of May 2019, when protesters in Britain threw milkshakes over right-wing candidates in the European elections. Carl Benjamin was hit four times in a week, then Nigel Farage. Stewart Lee asked in The Guardian whether milkshakes were the new politics of resistance. It follows the same regular pattern as the racing verb: milkshaked, milkshaking. It is most at home in the passive: he was milkshaked.

6. 6
   nounslangcountable

   In horse racing, an alkaline mixture given to a horse in the hope of improving how well it races.

   A positive test for a milkshake led to the trainer's suspension.

   Stewards screen for milkshakes by measuring carbon dioxide levels in the blood.

   Note

   Racing slang for an illegal doping mixture: baking soda, sugar and water given to a horse before a race to increase endurance. It belongs to the vocabulary of positive tests, stewards and suspensions. Katie Bo Lillis's Death of a Racehorse (2025) recalls that in 1999 Bobby Frankel was rumored to have given a filly one before a race in Kentucky. Outside racing, explain it the first time you use it.

7. 7
   verbslangtransitive

   To give a horse an alkaline supplement in order to improve its racing performance.

   Investigators alleged that the stable would milkshake favorites to mask fatigue.

   The trainer milkshaked two horses ahead of the championship meet.

   Note

   Racing turned the doping mixture into a verb, and the verb inflects regularly: milkshaked, not milkshook. Because it names an offense, it sits naturally in the passive (the horse was milkshaked) and in the -ing form used like a noun (the milkshaking incident). That is the language of charges, guilty pleas and inquiries. The horse is always the object; the trainer is the one who milkshakes.

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