Definition
Abstaining from drinking any alcoholic drink, usually in the sense of having given it up (as opposed to never having partaken); teetotal.
Origins
Originally on the water wagon or on the water cart, referring to carts used to hose down dusty roads: see the 1901 quotation below. The suggestion is that a person who is “on the wagon” is drinking water rather than alcoholic beverages. The term may have been used by the early 20th-century temperance movement in the United States; for instance, William Hamilton Anderson (1874 – c. 1959), the superintendent of the New York Anti-Saloon League, is said to have made the following remark about Prohibition: “Be a good sport about it. No more falling off the water wagon. Uncle Sam will help you keep your pledge.”
In Context
- "I wanted to git him some whisky, but he shuck his head. 'I'm on the water-cart,' sez he."
- ""Where did you get all that money?" / "Went to hear Bill and climbed on the water wagon.""
- ""Sit down, bo," invited Soup Face. "I guess you're a regular all right. Here, have a snifter?" and he pulled a flask from his side pocket, holding it toward The Oskaloosa Kid. / "Thank you, but;—er—I'm on the wagon, you know," declined the youth."
- "[T]hree years later he began formally to go on the wagon: "I quit drinking three months ago, hopefully for life.""
- "In fact regularly going on the wagon is a sure indication of a serious drink problem. If they genuinely enjoy a drink, why would they even want to go a month without one? Obviously because their drinking was causing them a problem."
- "The Big Brother house guests drank liquor by the crateful. But Love Island’s tortuous trysts are fuelled by fruit juice and nosecco. Why did reality TV go on the wagon?"