Noun

A midday meal (in a context in which the evening meal is called supper or tea).

*

*:At twilight in the summeron the floor.

The main meal of the day, often eaten in the evening.

An evening meal.

A meal given to an animal.

:

A formal meal for many people eaten for a special occasion.

*{{quote-book, year=1897, author=

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 citation , passage=When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.}}

*{{quote-book, year=1927, author= F. E. Penny

, chapter=4, title= Pulling the Strings , passage=Soon after the arrival of Mrs. Campbell, dinner was announced by Abboye. He came into the drawing room resplendent in his gold-and-white turban. […] His cummerbund matched the turban in gold lines.}}

(lb) The food provided or consumed at any such meal.

Noun

(en noun)

A mixed alcoholic beverage.

They visited a pub noted for the wide range of cocktails they serve.

* 1806 , 13 May 1806 edition of Balance and Columbian Repository , published by Hudson, New York, (first appearance in print):

Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head.

A mixture of other substances.

Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.

a cocktail of illegal drugs

A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.

(Darwin)

(UK, slang, dated) A mean, half-hearted fellow; a coward.

* Thackeray

It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail .

A species of rove beetle, so called from its habit of elevating the tail.