When I listened to this month's English Journal issue, I heard the word "cocktail" in a strange sentence. The sentence is as below,
So I looked after the word "cocktail" by my electric dictionary, it says
Kerr oversaw the experiment at Johns Hopkins, which involved growing embryonic stem cells in a special chemical cocktail called "growth factor," that helped the cells flourish.The CBS Evening News - Report3 Spinal Cord Disease and Stem Cell Research (EJ Nov. 2006)
In this sentence, the meaing of "cocktail" is the third one, a mixture of different substances. I knew the first meaning and I like to drink the first meaning "cocktails". But I didn't know the second and the third meaning, so I learned the meaning of the word "cocktail", it was good for me. When I read the dictionary definition, I awore that the word "cocktail" is countable. I thought "cocktail" is uncountable, and I wonder why cocktail is countable, even now. How can we count "cocktail"? One side-car, one ginlet, one daiquiri?
- n. [C] a drink usually made from a mixture of one or more spirits and fruit juice. It can also be made without alcohol
- n. [C, U] a dish of small pieces of food, usually served cold
- n. [C] a mixture of different substances, usually ones that do not mix together well
OALD 6th edition
In "Practical English Usage", the difference between countable and uncountable nouns is explained as below,
But after that, it is also explained that
Uncountable (or 'mass') nouns are the namse of materials, liquids, abstract qualitiess, collections and other things which we see as masses without clear boundaries, and not as separate objects.Practical English Usage 148. countable and uncountalbe nouns(1): basic infomation
Finally, we have to check dictionaries. Do "cocktails" have "boundaries" by glass?
Usually it is easy to see whether a noun is countable or uncountable. But it is not always so clear. ...... to know exactly how a particular noun can be used, it is necessasry to check in a good dictionary.Practical English Usage 148. countable and uncountalbe nouns(1): basic infomation
