birling

verb

present participle of birl, chiefly Scottish
as in drinking
to take part in drunken revelry spent a good part of his time in Edinburgh birling into the wee small hours of the night

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for birling
  1. drinking
  2. carousing
  3. reveling
  4. bingeing
Verb
  • People were using fans and drinking lots of water at this year's event.
    — Andrea Nakano, CBS News, 10 Sep. 2026
  • Only about 3% of Earth’s total water is freshwater that is usable for drinking.
    — Kristin Tsumura Tsai, Los Angeles Times, 9 Sep. 2026
Definition of drinking
Verb
  • Three sitting rooms are complemented by a further three members’ social spaces for carousing in, concealed behind a subtle screen (here, DJs including Goldierocks make appearances, and mobile snaps are banned; staff politely place a sticker over mobile camera lenses).
    — Condé Nast, Condé Nast Traveler, 18 May 2026
  • The team were meek in defeat, but after a weekend carousing and communing in central London, Newcastle fans arrived at Wembley with a collective hangover.
    — George Caulkin, New York Times, 20 Mar. 2026
Definition of carousing
Verb
  • Right in the middle of cheering, reveling masses was MARTA — a connective system of veins that efficiently moved the happy throngs.
    — Doug Turnbull, AJC.com, 2 Aug. 2026
  • Mary Murphy, a young reporter from Queens, had been at Shea that night, reveling with her sisters in the upper loge section along the first-base line.
    — Tyler Kepner, New York Times, 31 July 2026
Definition of reveling
Verb
  • The shows also serve to eat up time during dayside hours when consumers may not be interested in binging a drama series or original movie.
    — Alex Weprin, HollywoodReporter, 1 Sep. 2026
  • This is someone’s Super Bowl, if the Super Bowl was about binging 15 pounds of cased beef tubes.
    — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 4 July 2026
Definition of bingeing
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

birled
birling
birls
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Cite this Entry

“Birling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/birling. Accessed 13 Sep. 2026.

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