one for the road
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
A final drink before leaving a place
Literally: one drink for the road
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
One for the road — we road test a GRiD laptop in the US.
He was a long way from being an alcoholic, but he was vulnerable to heavy social drinking and was a sucker for the old Scottish adage ' One For The Road '.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “one for the road” mean?
A final drink before leaving a place Literally: one drink for the road
Is “one for the road” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.