birling

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
Verb
  • For chemicals classified as possible human carcinogens, MCLGs are typically set at a level where drinking the water daily for 70 years would cause one additional cancer case per 1 million people above the background rate.
    Christine Kirchhoff, The Conversation, 30 July 2026
  • Traditionally, mate is passed around a group, with friends and family members often drinking from the same bombilla.
    Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2026
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
Verb
  • 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
  • And on Wednesday, here in Atlanta, the Argentines turned a tourist attraction called Underground Atlanta into Underground Argentina, reveling with drums, chants, and dancing after beating England, 2-1, to earn a place in the championship game.
    Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor, 18 July 2026
Verb
  • 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
  • Michelle has also faced ongoing comments on her appearance ‒ a 2011 cartoon depicted her as overweight and bingeing on hamburgers and more recently, she has been accused of taking Ozempic to lose weight.
    Jennifer Hassan, USA Today, 15 June 2026
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Cite this Entry

“Birling.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/birling. Accessed 1 Aug. 2026.

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