nightcap

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an alcoholic drink taken at the end of an evening, especially shortly before bed

   They returned to the hotel bar for a quiet nightcap.

2. 2
   noun

   a soft cloth cap formerly worn in bed

   The old illustration shows him in a striped nightcap and gown.

3. 3
   noun

   in North American sport, the final game of a doubleheader

   The home team won the afternoon game but lost the nightcap.

A compound of night + cap, first naming the cap worn in bed. By the early nineteenth century it also denoted a final drink before sleep, as though the drink completed the evening in the way the cap completed one's night clothes. The sporting sense later extended the idea of a final event.

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