- gimlet (n.)
- type of boring tool, mid-14c., gymbelette, from Anglo-French and Old French guimbelet, guibelet (12c., Modern French gibelet), which is probably of Germanic origin, perhaps from Middle Dutch wimmelkijn (with substitute of French diminutive suffix), diminutive of wimmel "auger, drill." Middle English also had wimble in the same sense (mid-13c.), probably from an Old North French form of the same word. As the name of a cocktail made with gin or vodka and lime juice, by 1928, presumably from its "penetrating" effects on the drinker.
