This. While it is pretty transparent that thirst is probably not why you’re refusing the drink, it’s a way to politely refuse that doesn’t open your decision up to argument.
I have taken to saying “no thanks, I’m not hungry/thirsty,” in situations when someone is offering me something that I don’t want.
I like this explanation. I also have an inkling that in the not too distant past “thirsty” had a secondary meaning of “desire to consume alcohol.”
That meaning is normal for me. I mean, I don’t say it, but I’m used to the idea that “thirsty” is used metaphorically to mean “want to drink alcohol” rather than a literal thirst.
I’d still find “I’m not thirsty” as a way of declining a very strong alcoholic drink strange, but I’d find it fairly clear and probably not think again about it.
Not too distant past secondary meaning? People still use it that way now, I thought. Maybe it’s one of those phrases whose popularity is waning, which is what caused the OP’s confusion to begin with, but I frequently use it that way, as do many of the people I hang out with. Just last weekend a friend held up a bottle of rum and asked if I were thirsty. Didn’t seem out of place to me at all.
No, that doesn’t seem out of place, it’s pretty common in all social circles I’ve moved in. But the opposite - responding to an alcoholic drink offer by saying one is not thirsty - isn’t something I’ve heard before between friends, in a joking manner.
I haven’t played the game but I’ve read enough about the plot - I’m pretty sure the woman saying this has reason to not really trust the guy offering, but doesn’t want to show that she’s suspicious. I’m agreeing with Miller that saying, “I’m not thirsty” not only turns down that drink, but other beverages as well. If she’d said, “I’m not a whiskey fan,” or “it’s too early for me to be drinking booze,” or something, he could find something else to offer, and more refusals might escalate a potentially bad situation.
There’s also surely some translation issues at work as well.
Indeed. Further I’d say that “I’m not thirsty” is a concise way to communicate “No, I don’t want that whiskey, nor do I want any other [alcoholic] drink from you/right now” as a “no thanks” to the whiskey might lead to a further dance of “Well how about something else?”
I don’t find “thirsty” to be odd in this usage at all. It’s obviously not the normal kind of thirst, the biological kind that you quench with water, but it’s still a desire to consume liquid.
If it matters, I’m 28, don’t drink in bars much, but used to spend a lot of time in them in my early 20s with friends who played in bands. I’ve lived in the upper midwest, upstate New York, and now New England. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a variation of this usage in all these places, and never with the implication that the speaker literally believed that the liquor would quench an actual thirst.
It doesn’t strike me as odd at all; it’s just a way of saying you don’t want a drink, whatever it is.
And yes, I’ve had whiskey.
This is very interesting. No-one I know would use ‘thirsty’ in reference to hard liquor, or even wine.
Hard liquor and mixed drinks, the question would be ‘Would you like a drink?’ “Something to drink” means anythink, hard or soft.
If you said you were thirsty, you’d be offered water, or a cold non-alchohlic drink. Maybe a beer.
That’s why you need to drink another glass of whiskey to quench the thirst created by the first.
I recently reread the Tintin album Le Secret de la Licorne (The Secret of the Unicorn). At some point during the story, Captain Haddock is narrating his ancestor’s encounter with the pirate Red Rackam. After Haddock’s ancestor is captured by Rackam’s men, he’s tied to his own ship’s mast and left there for several hours, during which, according to Haddock, he was suffering a lot. Tintin suggest it may have been due to hitting his head against a pulley earlier in the story, but Haddock corrects him, saying it was actually “thirst”. He then promptly downs his own whisky glass in one shot.
This sort of bothered me when I read it, because if Haddock’s ancestor really was thirsty (quite possible after being tied in the sun for the best part of a day), I don’t think whisky or rum would have been what he’d have in mind, and if what he actually wanted was a drink of strong alcohol, it’s not something I’d describe as thirst. But we can chalk it up to unreliable narration on Haddock’s part, who’s already quite boozed up (and still drinking) as he’s telling the story. But OTOH it may be that “thirsty” has a secondary meaning of “wanting an alcoholic drink”, and here both meanings are being confused for humourous effect.
This said, I would assume that responding “I’m not thirsty” to an offer of an alcoholic drink is merely a social convention, unrelated to the actual meaning of “thirst”.
“oh my, i’m on antibiotics right now!”
I agree with Vihaga. It doesn’t seem odd to me at all and it sounds like something I’d say if I wanted to politely refuse a drink, alcoholic or not.
It’s meant to be ironic.
Haddock is a raging alcoholic and considers water a poison. He only ever drinks whisky to slake his “thirst” whatever it might be. It’s entirely possible that Haddocks ancestor, who probably lived on ship’s grog himself, was the same way.
Just out of curiosity, are you too young to drink alcohol or choose not to drink it for whatever reason? This seems like a remarkably absolute attitude and I’ve never observed anyone follow your logic so strictly, yet you seem very certain.
For instance, in many many situations, almost any adult social situation, if someone hands me a drink, my first thought is going to be whether it’s alcoholic (probably is) and whether I want to consume it, not whether I’m thirsty.
I can certainly imagine being offered a drink and thinking first about whether I’m thirsty… if it were my grandma on a Sunday morning… a coworker in a business meeting.. plenty of cases. But there are equally many cases where everyone is drinking alcohol and I need to give at least half a thought to whether I want another alcoholic drink, and that comes way before the “Am I thirsty?” thought.
omg that’s too funny.
That’s interesting you’d make a dumb-assed assumption like that, coz there’s a whole bunch of people in this thread who have responded saying they’d probably say “I’m not thirsty, thanks” for a variety of reasons, yet you haven’t questioned their age or whether they drink or not.
Irony is one of the hardest things to translate, since what is ironic on one culture is not in another.
However, answering “I’m not thirsty” would also work as irony in Japanese, so it’s possible that it was written that way in French.
Also, I doubt I’d ever reject a drink in a social situation because I honestly wasn’t thirsty. If I’m not hungry, I wouldn’t eat - eating when you’re not hungry is just uncomfortable. But I rarely wait until I am thirsty to drink. I drink tea in the morning, and water all day, and wine or scotch at night. I’m never actually feeling thirsty when I drink those things.