DREG

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does dreg mean? 

• DREG (noun)
  The noun DREG has 1 sense:

1. a small amount of residue

  Familiarity information: DREG used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DREG (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A small amount of residue

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Hypernyms ("dreg" is a kind of...):

small indefinite amount; small indefinite quantity (an indefinite quantity that is below average size or magnitude)

 Context examples 

That only two glasses were used, and that the dregs of both were poured into a third glass, so as to give the false impression that three people had been here.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

But now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the effects.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They sank lower and lower into the muddy abyss, back into the dregs of the raw beginnings of life, striving blindly and chemically, as atoms strive, as the star-dust of the heavens strives, colliding, recoiling, and colliding again and eternally again.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution—such is not my taste.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The three glasses were grouped together, all of them tinged with wine, and one of them containing some dregs of beeswing.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs the persecution that had been White Fang's.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)