Binge

How to spell binge

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce binge

What does binge mean?

1. nounA short period of excessive indulgence in something, especially food, drink, or an activity.
2. verbTo indulge in an activity, especially eating or watching, to excess over a short period.

Binge in a sentence

• noun

  A weekend binge of takeaway food left him feeling sluggish on Monday.

• verb

  They like to binge on box sets every Friday night after work.

• noun

  After the stressful quarter, she went on a shopping binge she later regretted.

• verb

  It is easy to binge on snacks while studying late for an exam.

Where does binge come from?

Language of origin: Other

Binge began life as an English dialect word from Lincolnshire, where it was a verb meaning 'to soak' a wooden vessel so the wood would swell and stop leaking. From that very physical image of a barrel drinking in water, the word slid into a slang sense among rural drinkers, who used 'to go on the binge' to mean soaking themselves with alcohol on a heavy drinking bout. It surfaces in written English around the middle of the nineteenth century, still flavoured as regional or low slang. Over the twentieth century it broadened well beyond drink, so that one can now binge on food, television, or shopping. The exact ancestry of the original dialect word is uncertain, which is why its history is told with some caution, but the soaking image neatly explains the idea of taking in far more than is sensible. The soft 'g' sounding like 'j' is the main spelling trap, since the word keeps its silent 'e' to signal that pronunciation.

How the word is built

• binge (single root, originally a dialect verb meaning 'to soak'); no prefix or suffix