hangover

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   unpleasant physical or mental effects, such as headache, nausea, and fatigue, felt after drinking too much alcohol

   He woke with a hangover after drinking far more than he had intended.

2. 2
   noun

   a custom, attitude, problem, or effect that remains from an earlier time

   The restriction was a hangover from wartime rationing.

From the phrasal verb hang over and the idea of something remaining or looming after its original cause. The sense of a surviving remnant came first; the familiar alcohol-aftereffects sense developed in American English in the early twentieth century.

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