What does guzzler mean?
Guzzler is an informal noun with two familiar uses. Its principal meaning is a person who drinks greedily or with conspicuous speed, often suggesting someone who empties a glass or bottle more quickly than their companions. The word carries a mildly comic or disparaging tone, but it can describe habitual heavy drinking without being deliberately abusive. By extension, a guzzler is a vehicle, machine, or appliance that consumes unusually large quantities of fuel, electricity, or another resource. Thus, an old SUV may be called a fuel guzzler, while a power-hungry data centre may be described as an energy guzzler. The word is readily understood in informal British and American English and is especially common in conversation, headlines, and environmental or automotive commentary. It is built on guzzle, whose sound history ultimately connects it with words such as gurgle and gargle. Guzzler is useful when the point is not simply that something consumes resources, but that it does so at a strikingly excessive rate.
nounA guzzler is a person who drinks greedily or rapidly. By extension, it is a vehicle, machine, or other thing that consumes large quantities of fuel, energy, or another resource.
- A person who drinks greedily or rapidly.
- A vehicle, machine, or object that consumes large quantities of fuel, energy, or another resource.
"Their new SUV is such a fuel guzzler that they rarely drive it beyond the city."
"He was such a guzzler that he finished both beers before the band came on."
"The old truck is an enormous fuel guzzler on long journeys."
The plural is used for multiple people, vehicles, or machines of this kind.
"The two biggest guzzlers in the garage are the pickup truck and the camper."
A guzzler can be a person, a car, or even a computer: one word covers both human appetite and a machine's thirst for power.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does guzzler come from?
Guzzler is an English agent noun formed from guzzle. Guzzle appeared in early modern English and is commonly traced through French gosser, meaning “to gurgle,” to Latin gurgulare, an imitative verb associated with a gurgling sound; this also explains its relationship to gurgle and gargle.
How guzzler is actually used
Informal and often humorous or mildly derogatory when describing a person. In the figurative sense, it can be used seriously in automotive, environmental, and technology commentary.