DREGS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dregs mean? 

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

1. sediment that has settled at the bottom of a liquid

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• DREGS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Sediment that has settled at the bottom of a liquid

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

dregs; settlings

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

deposit; sediment (matter that has been deposited by some natural process)

Domain usage:

plural; plural form (the form of a word that is used to denote more than one)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dregs"):

grounds (dregs consisting of solid particles (especially of coffee) that form a residue)

 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)

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)

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)

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)