cold drink money

noun

"cold-drink-money" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“cold drink money” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
16
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - a small bribe

Corpus desk

Index EN-cold-drink-money · cold drink money · English

cold drink money · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 16 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "C" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for cold drink money
PropertyValue
Headwordcold drink money
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters16
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “cold drink money” in English

cold drink moneysits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

cold drink money is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "a small bribe".

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for cold drink money, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is cold drink money, spelled C-O-L-D- -D-R-I-N-K- -M-O-N-E-Y.

Definition

  1. 1
    a small bribe

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how cold drink money appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. In South Africa such requests are so common that bribes for driving offences are known as “cold drink money”.
  2. The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) has welcomed a court judgment that found a Pretoria taxi driver guilty for trying to bribe a traffic officer with R70 ‘cold drink money’.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "cold drink money"?
"cold drink money" is spelled C-O-L-D- -D-R-I-N-K- -M-O-N-E-Y.
What does "cold drink money" mean?
As a noun, "cold drink money" means: a small bribe
What language does "cold drink money" come from?
"cold drink money" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list