The term can refer to two different types of beverage:

• In the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Cuba and Italy, lemonade refers to an uncarbonated mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and water. In India and Pakistan, where it is commonly known as limu paani or nimbu paani, lemonade may also contain salt. In Brazil, lemonade is, sometimes, made with full lemons (including the skin) instead of just lemon juice.

• In Germany, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and much of the rest of the world, the term mainly refers to a colourless, carbonated, sweet soft drink containing either natural or artificial lemon flavor, such as Schweppes Lemonade. 7 Up and Sprite are similar but are lemon-lime flavoured and so arguably not lemonade.

Terminology

The French word limonade, which originally referred to a lemon-flavoured drink, has since come to mean "soft drink," regardless of flavour, in many languages.

In the UK, the suffix 'ade' means a carbonated sweet soft drink; hence limeade, orangeade, cherryade, etc.

American-style lemonade exists in the UK as a 'homemade' drink (also called lemonade or "lemon crush"), but is only rarely sold commercially under that name. A carbonated version is commonly sold commercially as 'cloudy' or 'traditional' lemonade. There are also similar uncarbonated products, lemon squash and lemon barley water, both of which are usually sold as a syrup which is diluted to taste.

In Ireland, lemonade refers to the carbonated, lemon-flavored soft drink

In Vietnam, it is called nước chanh, a mix of water, lime or lemon juice, sugar, salt, and is usually not carbonated.

Lemonade, as the name suggests, is made from lemons. When combined with sugar, it gives a pleasant mixture of sour and sweet to produce a flavor very agreeable to the taste buds.

Pink lemonade

Pink lemonade is simply lemonade that has been dyed with pink coloring and is sometimes made sweeter. Sometimes artificial colorings are used; natural colorings can include grenadine, cherry juice, red grapefruit juice, grape juice, cranberry juice, strawberry juice, pink-fleshed Eureka lemon juice, or other juices.

The New York Times credited Henry E. "Bunk Allen" Allott as the inventor of pink lemonade in his obituary:

At 15 he ran away with a circus and obtained the lemonade concession. One day while mixing a tub of the orthodox yellow kind he dropped some red cinnamon candies in by mistake. The resulting rose-tinted mixture sold so surprisingly well that he continued to dispense his chance discovery.