water drinker

water drinker

English

Noun

water drinker (plural water drinkers)

1. Someone who drinks water, especially in preference to alcoholic drinks; a teetotaler. [from 15th c.]
   • 1789, James Boswell, in Danziger & Brady (eds.), Boswell: The Great Biographer, Yale 1989, p. 21:

     Could not resist Metcalfe's fine dishes and wines. Sir Joshua began to be a water-drinker.

   • 2012, Jerry White, London in the Eighteenth Century, Bodley Head 2017, p. 326:

     Ben Franklin, an American and a water drinker, found his fellow workers at Watts's printing house ‘great guzzlers of beer’ around 1725.

2. (Christianity, obsolete) A member of an early Christian sect which drank water instead of wine during the Eucharist. [16th–19th c.]
3. (now historical) Someone who drinks the waters at a spa. [from 17th c.]