A hot drink made by mixing whisky (or another strong spirit like rum or brandy) with sugar or honey and hot water. People usually add lemon, and often cloves or a cinnamon stick. The full name is 'hot toddy', and most people say the whole phrase — 'toddy' on its own sounds a little old-fashioned in British and American English, though it is still perfectly clear. What matters about this word is not really the recipe but the situation: a toddy is what someone drinks when they have a cold, a sore throat, or a bad cough, or when they have come in from the snow and want to warm up. Parents make one for themselves at night when they feel ill. So the word carries a feeling of comfort and medicine, not of a party — you would not order a round of toddies for friends who are out having fun. People half-believe it helps you get better; doctors are doubtful, but the belief is very strong and very old. There is one more thing worth knowing. In India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and parts of Africa, 'toddy' means something completely different: the sweet sap that comes out of a palm tree, drunk fresh or left to ferment into a mild alcoholic drink. That is actually the older meaning, and the one the word arrived in English with. The hot-whisky sense came later, from British people in India borrowing the word for a mixed hot drink. Both meanings are alive today, in different parts of the world.