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In my home language in a very informal situation the English term TABLE MATE is used for a group of people who get together usually to consume alcohol. Is this expression in use in English? Or else is there any other expression used to describe the people who usually meet to have drinks?

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I don't know "table mate" to have that meaning. According to Merriam-Webster, a tablemate is a "dining companion". I would say, more broadly, a tablemate is person with whom you share a table, not necessarily for dining.

The closest term I know is "drinking buddies." In essence, drinking buddies are people with whom you hang out and drink. They may or may not be the usual friends you hang out with. They might just be a group you hang out with specifically for drinking. That's how I understand it.

I couldn't find this in a reputable dictionary, but I found an Urban Dictionary entry and a mention in a health article:

The present study sought to further examine the role of peers on alcohol use and problems among young adults. In particular, we focused on a specific subset of peers in one’s social network mostly for activities related to alcohol use called “drinking buddies.”

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convives
drinking companions
drinking buddies

convives was originally a French word, but in 2015 it became even the Word of the Day at dictionary.com, so you can use it with confidence.
drinking companions and drinking buddies are longer, but more traditional collocations.

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    Please edit to include an explanation of how these are used; answers without explanation do not teach the patterns of the language well. See the Submitting Answers that merely answer the question discussion on meta. Dec 3, 2018 at 1:44
  • I've add short explanation. Is it enough or I should add usage examples? Sorry, I'm new at this site. Dec 3, 2018 at 2:14
  • Should be OK, but the more explanation the better, usually. Dec 3, 2018 at 2:19
  • Thank you! I thought it was a simple question and tried to give an answer as simple as possible. Dec 3, 2018 at 2:32
  • There's value in simplicity, but an answer needs to give enough explanation that either the original asker or a future searcher can a) match it up with their (possibly slightly different) situation and b) learn more about the subject. Beyond that, it can be helpful to give a very short, basic summary and then follow it up with an expansion that gives more details. You can see something of this pattern in these two answers of mine. Dec 3, 2018 at 3:29

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