plural winos
1
: a person (especially a homeless person) who is habitually drunk on wine
… his father was a wino, living on the streets …Kevin Murphy
… I was relieved to get downstairs and find it was just one of the regular neighborhood winos, a placable fellow whom I have escorted out before with no hard feelings.Victoria McKernan
2
: a wine enthusiast or connoisseur
Perhaps your recipient is a wino but you don't have the budget for a subscription or would prefer the gesture of physically giving them a gift.Louis Cheslaw
The perfect item for any wino who wants to take their tasting skills to the next level.Wine Enthusiast

Examples of wino in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web To promote their inventory, the staff hosts a free wine tasting, which is paired up with all sorts of cheeses, every Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. On Valentine’s Day, winos will be drinking pink bubbles as the store will be popping open everything from champagne to Cava. Miami Staff, Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024 Feed your wino friend's sense of curiosity with the most popular wine club in the land. Jasmine Gomez, Women's Health, 11 Aug. 2023 Some started at The Sweet Factory, then spent the afternoon dipping a hand into the candy bag like a wino with a bottle. Rich Cohen, wsj.com, 29 Apr. 2023 These were given suitably stupid names, like selectrons, sneutrinos, squarks, photinos, and my personal (least) favorite, the wino boson. Paul Sutter, Ars Technica, 27 Jan. 2023 If your uncle is a wino, this is the membership service to set him up with. Mark Stock, Men's Health, 15 Dec. 2022 During a 1968 vote-fraud investigation with the Chicago Daily News, Recktenwald went undercover as a Skid Row wino and registered to vote at a succession of flophouses over several weeks. Bob Goldsborough, chicagotribune.com, 23 Aug. 2021 The business also hosts events, including wine tastings and wino bingo. Hannah Kirby, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 13 Feb. 2020 Street punks and winos from the Mission began to show up. Gary Kamiya, SFChronicle.com, 29 Nov. 2019

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wino.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1915, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of wino was in 1915

Dictionary Entries Near wino

Cite this Entry

“Wino.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wino. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

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