on the wagon
Prepositional phrase
  1. (idiomatic) Abstaining from drinking any alcoholic drink, usually in the sense of having given it up (as opposed to never having partaken); teetotal.
    • 1917 (first published 1918 March), Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Oakdale Affair”, in Blue Book Magazine (Project Gutenberg; EBook #363)[https://web.archive.org/web/20160330104624/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/363/363-h/363-h.htm], Chicago, Ill.: Story-Press Corp., published 25 January 2013 (Project Gutenberg version), OCLC 270523625 ↗, archived from the original ↗ on 30 March 2016; republished in The Oakdale Affair; The Rider, Tarzana, Calif.: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., 1937, OCLC 8951886 ↗:
      "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.
  2. (by extension) Maintaining a program of self-improvement or abstinence from some other undesirable habit.
    He’s been on the smoking cessation wagon for two weeks now.
  3. Used other than with a figurative or idiomatic meaning: see on, the, wagon
Synonyms Antonyms


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