tie one on

English

Etymology

From earlier tie a bun on, where bun means “bender, drunken spree” and probably comes from bung.[1] First attested in the 1940s.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Verb

tie one on (third-person singular simple present ties one on, present participle tying one on, simple past and past participle tied one on)

  1. (idiomatic, colloquial, dated) To drink alcohol excessively, to the point of being drunk
    Synonym: hang one on
    • 1940, Hearst's International combined with Cosmopolitan‎[2], volume 109, page 77:
      "Let's tie one on!" said Peachy gaily. "Come on, Eve!"
      Eve said she couldn't drink a thing. "Besides, it's fattening!"
    • 2004 October 17, Paul Theroux, “Books: Damned Old Graham Greene”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 September 2010:
      Haiti […] was distressed, tropical, ramshackle, overcrowded, poor and on the brink of civil war. […] Its ornate hotels were in a state of decay, yet there was enough alcohol available for a guest to tie one on.

See also

References

  1. ^ Frank Kelly Rich (February 2005) “On The Cuff and Under the Table: The origins of your favorite drinking words and phrases”, in Modern Drunkard Magazine‎[1], retrieved 23 July 2025

Further reading

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