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Martini

nounnounproper nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//mɑːˈtiːni//
  • United States//mɑɹˈtini//

A type of rifle using similar features.

noun

  1. 1

    obsoleteA breech mechanism for a rifle.

  2. 2

    A type of rifle using similar features.

    Now the butt of a Martini in the small of your back hurts a great deal

Etymology

Named after Hungarian-born Swiss inventor Frédéric de Martini (1832–1897).

noun

  1. 1

    A brand of Italian vermouth available in several versions, from the Martini & Rossi company.

  2. 2

    Variant of martiniAlternative letter-case form of martini (a cocktail made with gin or vodka and vermouth).

    Only the priest and Major Hugh Edwards, a blind Englishman, drank Martini or something cheaper in the hot hours after noon and before the clumping sabots announced the working day’s end.

    They would talk while Mrs Costello smoked and drank Martini, and then there would be the sudden, jolting sound of the hoover being switched on.

    My father and mother drank Martini while I had orange juice.

Etymology

Martini is an Italian name, and in the sense of vermouth is used by the Italian company Martini & Rossi. In the sense “cocktail with vermouth and either gin or vodka”, coined in America in the 19th or 20th century, for which various theories exist – perhaps named for the Italian brand of vermouth, perhaps after Martinez, California, perhaps after an Italian bartender of that name.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A surname from Italian.

Forms

plural
Martinis
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).