Alcoholic drinks; cocktails. In the U.S., both the singular and plural forms have traditionally been used by themselves (I need a drink; She had three drinks before dinner), whereas in Britain, drinks is commonly paired with another word: drinks party, drinks menu, drinks tray, interval drinks (which you imbibe at the theatre between the first and second acts).
At the height of summer, nothing makes a splash like a drinks party at your weekend house.(New York Times, July 16, 2004)/The other day, at loose ends in Midtown at the tenebrous end of happy hour, I larked into an averagely bad, decently fun Tex-Mex restaurant in the Theater District. The barman presented the drinks menu. The drinks menu presented an assault, its plastic cover a window onto a plane of existence where 29 distinct margarita flavors live, or at least refuse to die. (Troy Patterson, Slate, May 4, 2011. Note the use of the moderately British barman [instead of bartender] and larked, for which the OED cites H. O’Reilly’s 1889 5o Years on Trail: “I was always larking about and playing pranks on my schoolfellows.”)
Clearly Mr. Patterson is a phony prat. It should also be noted that the Brits refer to those nabbed for a DWI, or DUI, are nicked for drink driving, or drinks driving, rather than drunk or drunken driving as they are here. No matter where such selfish idiots are, they pose a menace…