wineskin

Etymology

It is formed from English wine + skin.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A bag for wine made from the skin of an animal: 1700, in John Stevens's translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote.^[2] Etymonline dates it to 1749, under the spelling wine-skin.^[4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word only to 1821, and Dictionary.com to 1815–25.^[5][3]

Semantic evolution

The word was later used more generally for any container for wine of a similar shape.^[2] From 1821, in Walter Scott's Kenilworth, it was also applied figuratively to a heavy drinker.^[2] Dictionary.com records wine bag as another name for it.^[3]

Timeline

• 1700 – a bag for wine made from an animal's skin.^[2]
• 1821 – figurative, a heavy drinker, in Scott's Kenilworth.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bag made from the whole or nearly the whole skin of an animal such as a goat, used for holding and pouring wine.^[5][6][2][1]
2. Figuratively, a person who drinks to excess; a drunkard.^[2]

Related words

• wine
• skin

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin