Other forms: drinkers
A drinker is somebody who drinks, especially alcohol. A heavy drinker, a social drinker, not a drinker.
The qualifier carries the meaning: a social drinker, a moderate drinker, a heavy drinker, and in medicine those are roughly defined by units per week. Not a drinker is the standard polite way of declining. A drinker is also a container animals drink from: a chicken drinker. Note drink driving, which in Britain is the offence and drunk driving in America; and that binge drinker is a defined public health category.
1noundrinkerSomebody who drinks, especially alcohol.
“He was a heavy drinker until his doctor warned him about his liver.”
2nouncontainerA container animals drink from.
“Make sure the chickens' drinker is full of clean water every morning.”
drinker is somebody or something that drinks.
Old English drincere is drink plus -ere. Drink is Germanic and has no Latin competitor in common English, which is unusual and probably says something about which culture kept the vocabulary.
Proto-Germanic
*drinkārijaz — drinker
Old English
drincere — drinker
Middle English
drinkere
English, today
drinker
From Middle English drinkere, drynkere, from Old English drincere (“drinker”), from Proto-Germanic drinkārijaz (“drinker”), equivalent to drink + er. Cognate with stq Drinker (“drinker”), West Frisian drinker (“drinker”), Dutch drinker (“drinker”), German Low German Drinker (“drinker”), German Trinker (“drinker”), Danish drikker (“drinker”), Swedish drickare, drinkare (“drinker”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA