Meaning & use
caipirinha
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Meanings
nouncountable or uncountable
A Brazilian alcoholic cocktail made from cachaça, fresh lime, sugar and ice.
Grammar: Countable for a single serving ('two caipirinhas'); uncountable when you mean the drink as a substance ('He drank too much caipirinha').
Patterns
- a caipirinha
- make a caipirinha
- order a caipirinha
- a pitcher of caipirinha
We ordered two caipirinhas and watched the sunset over the bay.
The bartender muddled the lime with sugar before adding the cachaçan and ice.
On a hot afternoon in Rio, a cold caipirinha goes down dangerously fast.
nouncountable
A serving of this cocktail in a glass, especially one bought in a bar.
Grammar: Use it with a number or a determiner when you mean one glass rather than the drink in general.
Patterns
- another caipirinha
- a round of caipirinhas
- a second caipirinha
She finished her caipirinha and signaled to the waiter for another.
The bar was crowded, and a tray of caipirinhas went past us on its way to the terrace.
Word forms
| plural | caipirinhas |
|---|
Common combinations
- make a caipirinha
- It only takes a minute to make a caipirinha if the limes are already cut.
- order a caipirinha
- I ordered a caipirinha because the menu said it was the house specialty.
- a pitcher of caipirinhas
- They shared a pitcher of caipirinhas while the band played.
- a classic caipirinha
- This bar serves a classic caipirinha with nothing but lime, sugar and cachaça.
- a frozen caipirinha
- A frozen caipirinha is blended with crushed ice instead of stirred.
- a caipirinha bar
- We found a little caipirinha bar near the beach.
Synonyms and how they differ
- daiquiri
- A daiquiri is a similar lime-and-sugar cocktail, but it is made with rum rather than cachaça, so it tastes lighter and less grassy.
- mojito
- A mojito also uses lime, sugar and ice, but it adds mint and rum, so it is fresher and more herbal than a caipirinha.
- cocktail
- Cocktail is the general word for any mixed alcoholic drink; caipirinha names one specific Brazilian recipe.
Word family
- cachaça noun
- The Brazilian sugarcane spirit that gives a caipirinha its flavor; without it the drink is just lime and sugar.
Commonly confused: caipirinha or capirinha? caipirinha or caipiroska?
caipirinha vs capirinha
A very common misspelling. The correct spelling keeps the 'ai' after the 'c': caipirinha.
caipirinha vs caipiroska
A caipiroska looks and tastes similar but is made with vodka instead of cachaça; the name is different, so do not use them interchangeably.
Practice
Which sentence uses the drink word correctly?
Choose one answer.
'A caipirinha' means one glass of the cocktail, so the singular with 'a' fits. Option 2 wrongly adds 'of glasses', option 3 mixes 'a' with a plural noun, and option 4 puts the article after the noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “caipirinha”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.