wine, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

wine n.¹

1. (orig. university) a party at which those assembled drink wine.

1849		C. Kingsley Alton Locke (1862) 123: He disappeared every day about four to ‘hall’; after which he did not reappear till eight, the interval being taken up, he said, in ‘wines’ and an hour of billiards.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 91: How that snubbing you got at the Ecclesiological wine party seems to rankle [...] I’ll never mention that unfortunate wine again.
1873		‘Cuthbert Bede’ Little Mr. Bouncer 53: Did you hear of Warner of Exeter’s Wine, last monday night?
1885		Daily News 6 Mar. in Ware (1909) 267/1: His first ‘wine’, given in his own room, was an awful ordeal.
1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 20 Nov. 7/2: One ot tbe most absurd Instances of ignorant aping of English customs on record comes from Harvard, where an ambitious student sent out invitations to a "wine.' having heard [...] that such festivities were the proper thing at English universities.
1887		Echo 5 Sept. n.p.: Surely such a wine was never given at Oxford in any gentleman’s room [F&H].

2. (N.Z. prison) liquid morphine.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 203/2: wine n. liquid morphine.

wine bag (n.)

a drunkard who prefers wine to beer or spirits.

1890–1904

wine bum (n.) [bum n.³ (2)]

(US Und.) a wine-drinking alcoholic.

1926

J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 131: It serves me right [...] if I get lousy throwing all you wine bums in and out of the wagon.

wine-dot (n.) [a pun on SE Wyandotte, a breed of medium-sized domestic fowls, orig. found in US]

(Aus.) a drinker of cheap wine.

1948		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 25 Dec. 6/4: Three old wine-dots, sipping in the corner, took one look, said ‘This is it! We're in the rats!’.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 35: What’s his special? Is he a wine-dot?
1966		P. Pinney Restless Men 171: Yah, yer bloody winedot [...] You pong like a camel-driver’s jockstrap.
1978		T. Davies More Aus. Nicknames 109: The Wyandotte It started as the Winedot, and was the nickname of a worker who simply would not face the night shift without a bottle of wine.
1980		(ref. to 1920s–30s) Hepworth & Hindle Boozing out in Melbourne Pubs 15: Those who followed the Bacchic way were variously known as plonk fiends or artists, plonkos, winos, bombo bashers, winedots and wyandottes.

wine dump (n.) [dump n.³ (2)]

(US Und.) a cheap bar, frequented by wine-drinking alcoholics.

1909		Pacific Unitarian 18-19 270/1: On lower Jackson street there is a wine dump of the lowest order, frequented by dope fiends. Men sit at the tables drinking the cheap wine, snuffing cocaine or injecting the drug into their flesh.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 129: The wine dumps, where wine bums or ‘winos’ hung out, interested me. Long, dark, dirty rooms with rows of rickety tables, and a long bar behind which were barrels of the deadly ‘foot juice’ or ‘red ink,’ as the winos called it. Sometimes the dump was equipped with a small lunch counter in the back where the winos could buy for a nickel a big plate of something that looked like stew, and a hunk of stale bread.
1960		B. Towlen Golden Dawns 148: Henry first got drunk in what was commonly known, in the vernacular of the soldier, as a ‘wine dump,’ of which there were a number in the Italian section of San Francisco.

winegut (n.)

(US) an alcoholic for whom wine is the intoxicant of choice.

1958

H. Ellison Web of the City (1983) 52: Pa Santoro was a wine-gut.

winehead (n.) [SE wine + -head sfx (4)]

(US) an alcoholic who opts for wine as their preferred intoxicant; also attrib.

1955		‘Hal Ellson’ ‘Wrong Way Home’ in Tell Them Nothing (1956) 146: There’s a wine-head lying on the stoop like he’s dead.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 250: You goddam winehead.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 61: Go fuck yourself, you wine-head bastard.
1973		D. Goines Street Players 213: He would stand and drink wine with the bums and wineheads.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 46: Walter was a winehead, and when he couldn’t threaten or cajole his mother into wine money, he would rip off flat pint bottles.
1992		J. Mowry Way Past Cool 56: The Friends skated casually [...] dodging the legs of wineheads and zoners sticking from doorways.
2004		J. Ellroy ‘Hot-Prowl Rape-O’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 311: Wiggling wineheads and jakelegged juicers made mad by Muscatel.