There are more slang
words for inebriation than there are for any other word
in the English language.
This not only
illustrates the creative effects of alcohol, it also speaks
volumes about how alcohol has impacted the language in
general.
When the English
language was a mere lad and still closely tied to the mother
tongues from which it sprang, it did what a lot of young
men do when they start itching for independence and a life
of their own. It started hanging around a pub.
Fortunately it fell in with
a bright crowd. The individuals who’ve had the
most obvious impact on the English language, men such
as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson,
not only used the pub as a meeting place, they also did
some of their best work there. Bolstered by beer and
booze, these smart boys played it very fast and loose
with the lingo, as we all do when last call rolls around.
The difference being, people paid attention to these
wordsmiths. The pub served as a simmering pot in which
new cant and old Latin were well mixed with drams and
pints, stewed, strained, and eventually served up to
the public in the form of plays, poems, novels and dictionaries.
Soon the young language was
not only standing on its own two grammatical feet, it
also possessed the largest vocabulary of any language on
the planet. And no wonder. For when are we at our most
loquacious, when are we most willing to take liberty with
the lingo than when we’re on a hoolihan, tossing back pots,
and three sheets to the wind?
A
alcohol The word for the thing
that makes us so happy started out as an Arabic word describing
a fine metallic powder used as eye shadow (al-kuhul).
The word was broadened to mean “the pure spirit of anything” in
1672, but it wasn’t until 1753 that it was first
recorded in the sense of something you’d want to
put in your mouth. Alcoholics didn’t exist
in print until 1891—before then our gang went by
the less clinical names tosspots, topers and
soaks.
B
bar An abbreviation of barrier, it naturally
came to describe the counter that separated the drinks
from the drinkers. Near the end of the 16th century it
came 
to mean the building that housed that bothersome barricade
as well. Barmaid didn’t appear in print
until 1772, bartender arrived fifty years later
and the barfly didn’t start hassling them
for free drinks until 1910.
beer
bong Drunks may have filched bong from
the hippies, but the hippies lifted it from Vietnam veterans
(from the Thai word baung, meaning “a cylindrical
wooden tube”.) The Flower Children weren’t
above borrowing from the squares at the bar either—high and stoned meant
being drunk long before they were applied to marijuana
use.
bender Some
believe a drinking spree is called a bender because
a lot of bending of the arm is required. Others assume
it’s reference to the bends one might experience
after a long bout, which is unlikely as benders were
being executed as early as 1846, fifty years before the bends appeared
in print. More likely it owes it name to an obsolete British
coin, the sixpence, commonly called a bender because
they were made of silver and could be bent, as a test
of their veracity. To go drinking on a 
sixpence
or bender meant
you were loaded for bear (or beer, if you will). A popular
pub sign of the day read: “Drunk for a penny, dead
drunk for tuppence, clean straw for nothing” Which
meant you could stay loaded for six days or really tear
it up for three. Either way, you got a nice bed of clean
straw to pass out on. Now that’s hospitality.
binge Originally
meaning soak (as
in soak up some booze), it became a dialectal term meaning
to drink heavily in 1854. It wasn’t until the 1910s
that it became associated with eating and shopping. So
the next time you decide to get loaded, inform your spouse
you’re going on an “old-school shopping binge.” Which
can roughly translate into “shopping to drink heavily,” or
barhopping. Just don’t tell her that.
blackout Believe it or not,
the sense of losing your memory predated by a year the
idea of killing the lights to confuse enemy bombers. Both
senses of the word lifted the idea from the theatrical
term meaning “a
darkened stage.” Next time your friends accuse you
of theatrical behavior during a blackout, you may smugly
reply, “Well, duh.”
Bloody Mary Two
distinguished bartenders lay claim to this archetypical
hangover slayer. Fernand Petiot said he came up with idea
of combining tomato juice and vodka at Harry’s New
York Bar in Paris in 1926, then added the spices later
in New York. George Jessel, on the other hand, swore he
threw it together at a friend’s Palm
Beach home in 1927. What both men can agree on is the
cocktail was not named for the violently anti-Protestant
Queen of England, Mary Tudor. Petiot said an American customer
told him the new cocktail reminded him of a woman named
Mary who hung out at the Bucket of Blood Club in Chicago.
Jessel claimed it was named in honor of heiress Mary Brown
Warburton, who happened to walk in on the cocktail’s
inauguration. According to the story, she spilled some
of George’s
prototype on her gown and thus exclaimed, “Now,
you can call me Bloody Mary, George!” Sounds a bit
anecdotal to me (a legendary raconteur, George
had a wild story about nearly everything), so I’m
siding with Fernand.
blowout The word may smack of the 1970s,
but it came to mean a “big, loud party” as
early as 1824. Probably a play on the term blow up, as a properly-executed blowout is
easily as loud and expansive as an explosion.
boilermaker Short hand for boilermaker’s
delight,
a 19th Century slang term for a type of cheap whiskey favored
by the craftsmen who built and maintained boilers. They
called it such because the liquor was thought capable of
cleaning the scales from the inside of a boiler. Which
explains why the delight was eventually dropped
in favor of a beer chaser.
bootlegger In
the 17th century a bootleg described the upper part of
the rather tall boots popular at the time. It was also
popular (amongst English smugglers anyway) to hide bottles
of untaxed booze there. The term was later affixed to the
enterprising chaps who dealt in illicit alcohol during
U.S. Prohibition.
booze It’s a common misconception that the word
was borrowed from a brand of whiskey sold by one Mr. E.S.
Booz in the 1800s, but it is actually a much older word.
The 1529 Oxford dictionary defined it as “affected
by drinking,” and it is most likely a derivative
of the Medieval Dutch word busen, meaning “to
drink heavily.” Benjamin Franklin seemed rather
intrigued with the word, the Founding Father listed boozy as
one of his 225 synonyms for “drunk” and was
the first to put the word boozed (drunk) in print.
bouncer Drunks who reckon doormen are
bullies are more right then they know. While personal experience
has led some to think the word comes from a bouncer’s
desire to bounce their victims off the sidewalk like a
rubber ball, in truth it comes from the 13th Century word bounsen, which
means “to thump or hit.” Which explains why
the first recorded use of bouncer (1833) described
a common bully. It was a tidbit in an 1883 edition of
the London News that forever attached the word to the
guy defending the saloon: “When liberty verges on license
and gaiety on wanton delirium, the Bouncer selects the
gayest of the gay, and—bounces him!”
brannigan This
colorful and increasingly popular term describing a drinking
spree probably owes its life to the popular 1820 Irish
ballad “Barney Brannigan” (sometimes Barney
Brallaghan),
in which the eponymous hero rouses his heart’s true
desire at two in the morning with promises of whiskey
and wine. The term was immortalized in Emily Bronte’s
wildly popular book Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff
declared to Cathy, “Excuse me m’dear, but
I shan’t be in for supper this evening as I’m
off out on a prolonged brannigan with the boys.”
BYOB This abbreviated request to bring your own
(whether it be beer, bottle or booze) didn’t always
pertain to poorly-stocked parties. Before the drunks hijacked
the term in the 1950s, and as far back as the 1800s, it
meant Bring Your Own Basket. To the picnic. Who says we
aren’t becoming more civilized?
C
carouse This
well-traveled word entered the English lexicon as a corruption
of the French carrousser (to
quaff or swill), which in turn was borrowed it from the
German garhaus, a contraction of garaus trinken (to
drink up entirely.) While it now means to engage in drunken
merrymaking, author R.L. Stevenson put a finer point to
the word: “Dull men travail, whilst noblemen drowse.
Peasants sip ale, whilst kings carouse.”
So the next time a friend abandons
a half-finished drink, ask him, “Hey pal, are we
just sipping like peasants here, or are we carousing
like kings?”
cheers Though
the Brits presently use the word for everything from “Thanks” to “Goodbye” to “‘Ello!
What’s that you’ve got in that bag, then?”,
it’s surprising to discover it wasn’t widely
employed as a toast until World War I. The invading Normans
brought the word to England in the form of chiere,
meaning “face,” and because emotions are most
blatantly reflected on the face, it came to mean a person’s
mood or disposition. Greetings of “be of good cheer” and “cheer
up” were inevitably whittled down to a cheers as
early as the 1700s. It was only a matter of time before
cheering up was partnered with sharing a drink with friends.
cocktail Strictly out of the blue, the
word suddenly appeared in print as part of a political
diatribe in the Baltimore newspaper The Balance in 1806.
The writer didn’t
relate where he picked it up from and theories have abounded
since. It’s either named for: an old French recipe
for mixed wines, called a coquetel, brought to
America by General Lafayette’s soldiers in 1777;
the rooster tail feathers an innkeeper in Pennsylvania
employed as proto-swizzle sticks; an alcohol-spiked mash
given to fighting cocks called cock-ale; a cask’s
spigot was commonly called a cock and the tailings (dregs)
of the cask were often mixed and sold as a cut-rate libation;
mixed blood horses of the day were sometimes cock-tailed;
a New Orleanian named Antoine Peychaud served brandy drinks
in an egg-cup called a coquetier in French; it
was a morning drink served at the time the tail of the
evening met with the “cock-a-doodle-do” of
a mouthy rooster.
The list goes on. Which is
true? Your guess is as good as anyone’s. What is known
is it was once considered a specific type of mixed drink
among many others, including flips, crustas, swizzles and
bittered slings. Over time, however, cocktail subjugated
them all.
crapulous This expressive and sorely neglected substitute
for hungover deserves a comeback (“How am
I feeling today? Absolutely crapulous!”) This 18th
century refugee comes from the Greek kraipale (drunken
headache or nausea).
D
daiquiri F.
Scott Fitzgerald first put this cocktail to print in his
splendid 1920 novel This Side of Paradise.
Fitz must have liked them because he had his protagonist
order four doubles at once. Barroom history, such as it
is, has it that American engineer Jennings Cox threw the
first daiquiri together in a Cuban village by the same
name. Some revisionists, with no proof but plenty of PC
pluck, suggest the visiting gringo stole it from the locals
who used it for “medicinal
purposes.” Don’t we all, amigos, don’t
we all.
dead soldier This
slang for a vanquished bottle is attributed to U.S. doughboys
about to be shipped off to fight the Kaiser. A soldier
could be dead drunk, however,
as early as 1599.
dipsomania First defined in 1843 as a “morbid
craving for alcohol,” this rather compelling term
was forged from the Greek words dipsa (thirst)
and mania (madness). Thus a dipsomaniac suffers
from thirst madness, which is as good a way to explain
your next brannigan as any.
dive Seedy
bars have been known as such since at least 1871,
most likely because they tended to be located in basements
and one had to “dive” down the stairs to get
a drink. So the next time you fall down while walking
in the door of a ground-level bar, just tell them your
thought the joint was a real dive.
donnybrook This
rather pleasant word for a drunken brawl is named for a
suburb of Dublin. Since medieval times their annual fair
was famous not only for its heights of bacchanalian revelry
but also for the ferocious brawls that would inevitably
break out. In fact, they became so inevitable they had
to shut the fair down in 1855.
down the hatch This
venerable drinking expression most likely owes its origins
to sailors who reckoned the pouring of booze down the gullet
was much like cargo being lowered into a ship's
hold via the hatch. The reverse enjoyed brief popularity
during WWII, i.e.: “Mike’s
in the restroom unloading cargo.”
draft/draught From the 13th century
Old English word dreaht (to draw or drag), as
in drawing beer from a keg. It can also mean “to drink” as
in “If I draft enough drafts tonight you’ll
have to draft me home.”
drunk First
recorded as an adjective around 1340, an alteration of
the Middle English drunken, from
the verb drincan, which in turn arrives from
the Old High German word trinkan (to drink.).
Drunkard didn’t
appear until the 16th century and this too was abbreviated
to drunk around 1852. It’s a fairly versatile
word when you think about it: “The drunk drunk so
much he got drunk and went on a drunk.”
Dutch courage Due
to a fierce 17th century commercial rivalry, the Dutch
aren’t treated well
in the English language. Thus a Dutchman needs alcohol
to make him brave, a Dutch widow is a prostitute, and going
Dutch smacks of stinginess.
E
eighty-six This
unluckiest of numbers (at least as far as drunks are concerned)
has a very clouded history. It either means: the staff
doesn’t want to see your
face for as many years; a standard crew on British merchant
ships in the 19th century was eighty-five, meaning the
eighty-sixth sailor was left on shore with the land-lubbers;
there were 85 tables at NYC’s famous Twenty-One
club and to be offered a seat at “table 86” meant
you were about to get tossed out; a grave is generally
eight feet long and six feet deep; back in the Old West
86-proof whiskey was considered weak and strictly for
the ladies, so to serve it to a man was a subtle way of
saying, “You
ain’t wanted ‘round here, pard”; it
was verbal shorthand used at lunch counters for being
out of something, as in, “Eighty-six the pancakes” and
was later applied to customers who were plain out of luck.
So which theory is correct?
Well, since it wasn’t associated with being cut
off at a bar in print until 1943, you can rule out the
Old West and nautical theories right off the
bat, or boat, if you will. As far as the staff not wanting
to see your face, why would they choose 86 years, why
not 100, just to be safe? The grave theory seems too pat
and the club theory too clever. The lunch counter numerical
code, however, has been proven to have existed as early
as the 1930s, and thus seems the most likely source.
F
fifth If
a hardboiled P.I. is pounding a
fifth he’s taking down a 1/5 of a gallon of
liquor and probably trying to forget the dame who did
the tap dance on his ticker. The term didn’t become
popular until the 1920s and is presently being undermined
by the liquor industry’s fetish for the metric
system. Nowadays if you ask for a fifth, you’re
likely to receive a much less hardboiled 750 ml.
foofoo/froufrou
drink The
word frou-frou was
first recorded in the early 1870s, describing the rustling
sound a woman’s dress might make. It soon came to
mean “an elaborate or frilly decoration, as on women’s
clothing.” By WWII the expression frou-frou
drink appeared,
used to describe a fancy woman’s drink (especially
when held in the hand of a male friend). Twenty years
later the even more emasculate foofoo variation
surfaced.
G
go on a tear The phrase doesn’t
make a whole lot of sense, in relation to going on a drinking
spree, until you realize that tear hails from the Old English teran,
meaning “to consume or destroy.” Both of which
are apt to happen during a proper tear.
grog Traditionally
a mix of rum and water, it was named for the moniker of
the 18th Century Royal Navy admiral who came up with the
smashing idea of serving it to the sailors to keep them
in good spirits. Admiral Edward Vernon was nicknamed “Old
Grog” from his habit of wearing a type of cloak
called a grogram.
growler The refillable glass jugs you’re
allowed to walk out of microbreweries with were once metal
buckets. In pre-Prohibition times it was common for fathers
to dispatch their progeny to the saloon with a growler to
collect beer, and it was probably named for the growling
sound a metal bucket full of beer makes when pushed across
a bar top. The once popular term rushing the growler meant
a hurried beer run—beer in a bucket tends to lose
its head rather quickly and dad probably preferred it didn’t.
H
hair of the dog
that bit you This metaphor
first 
surfaced
in a 1546 collection of English colloquial sayings: “What
how fellow, thou knave, I pray thee let me and my fellow
have a haire of the dog that bit us last night. And bitten
were we bothe to the braine aright.” We all know
what that feels like. The homeopathic idea of taking a
little of what afflicted you as a cure can be traced all
the way back to Hippocrates. The ancient Greeks were much
more literal in their application, believing that a dog
bite would heal more quickly if you ate or applied dog
hair to the wound.
hangover While it’s easy to associate the word
with the image of some poor suffering drunkard hanging
his head over a sink, it was originally a 19th century
expression describing unfinished business—something
left over from a meeting, for example. It wasn’t
until the turn of the 20th century that it came to mean
the aches and pains left over from a night of carousing.
here’s mud
in your eye This toast may have been
popular with the soldiers slogging through the muddy trenches
of WWI, but it did not originate with them, as many believe.
It was being bandied about in U.S. saloons as early as
1890 and was popular with the English fox hunting and
race horse crowd before then. Most likely it’s a
back-handed toast among jockeys, meaning “Here’s
to you losing the race.” If you’ve ever been
to a race track after a good rain, you’ll note that
the leading horses throw up a lot a mud and the trailing
jockeys tend to get splattered from head to toe. The phrase
was all the more pertinent before the introduction of
goggles to the sport.
high jinks This term for boisterous
carryings-on once 
referred to a popular 17th century drinking
game. A group of drinkers would throw dice and whoever
came up short would be encouraged to perform some manner
of debauchery, such as drinking a large flagon of ale while
being held upside down or stealing a constable’s
hat.
highball First
appearing in print in 1898, highball came about
because a shot of whiskey was once commonly called a ball,
thus a highball was
a high or tall glass of whiskey. It was later applied to
the glassware required to deliver such a drink.
hooch A
derivative of hoochinoo, a
liquor named for the Alaskan Indians who distilled it.
A favorite beverage of the prospectors of the
1898 Klondike gold rush, they brought back the abbreviated
version to the lower 48 and applied it to any cheap liquor
they could get their hands on.
hoolihan/houlihan This
term for a proper booze binge surfaced in the 1890s, possibly
based on the surname of a proverbially rowdy London family
who figured in a number of ribald saloon ballads of the
era.
I
imbibe Though the Classical
Latin source imbibere (to absorb) was used mainly
in reference to absorbing ideas or knowledge, by the time
it reached England in the 1500s it meant to absorb liquids
by way of the mouth.
intoxicate Being
intoxicated in 15th century England wasn’t nearly
as joyful as it is now — it
literally meant you were full of poison. At some point
a nogoodnik decided sweet nectar alcohol was a form of
poison and it came to be applied to hale fellows who just
happened to be walking a little funny.
J
jag If you went on one of these in the 1500s it
meant you were climbing up on a load of hay or wood. By
the 19th century it was generalized to mean “a lot
of anything,” then was later applied to a period
of unrestrained activity, especially in regards to drinking, i.e. a
lot of fun.
jigger Most
contemporary drinkers don’t
think much of the miserly jigger measurement
technique, preferring the more generous free-pour system,
and our predecessors apparently felt the same way — jigger is
a snarky 1753 alteration of chigger (tiny mite
or flea).
jukebox The
title for this barroom stalwart arrived in a roundabout
way from the 1930s Black American slang jook (meaning
wicked or disorderly). Jook was
often paired up with joint, and since jook
joints were among the first to accept coin-operated
phonographs, the contraptions came to be known as jook (later juke) boxes.
Bartenders (after they’ve heard the same song for
the nth time) can surely attest to their wicked
roots.
K
karaoke This
most venal side-effect of excessive drinking comes from
the Japanese words kara (empty)
and oke (orchestra).
katzenjammer Still used today
by Germans to describe a hangover (it literally means “wailing
cat”), it was also quite popular in mid-19th Century
America and long overdue for a comeback.
L
libation If this word strikes
you as a bit high-falutin, it may be because it formerly
cited the act of pouring out wine in honor of a god. Though
the idea is still echoed in the pouring out of forties
for dead homies, most modern drinkers reckon the gods can
buy their own drinks.
liquor Getting liquored up in
the old days wasn’t nearly as much fun as it is now—the
original Latin (liquorem) meant any liquid in
general. It wasn’t until 1300 that it came to mean
something you were wise to hide from your castle-mates.
loaded The term may seem modern, but “to take
one’s load” meant “to drink one’s
fill” as far back as 1598.
lounge First
put to page in 16th Century Scotland, it 
probably
came from the French phrase s’allonger
paresseusement (to idle about). It came to mean a “comfortable
drawing room” during the 19th century. Lounge
lizards appeared decades before upscale bars started
calling themselves lounges in the 1930s — as
far back as 1912 these crafty scoundrels could be found
loitering around tea rooms and flirting with unattached
females.
lush By
the time the word was used to describe a drunkard (1890),
lush had already spent a century serving as a slang term
for liquor. Most likely it comes from the Old French laschier, meaning “to
loosen.” And
who’s more loose than a lush?
M
martini Success attracts many suitors and the
martini has enough to fill a dance hall. H.L. Mencken called
it “the only American invention as perfect as the
sonnet” and with that kind of write up it’s
no wonder there are as many would-be inventors of this
cocktail as there are for the, well, cocktail.
Ranging from the plausible to the patently ridiculous,
the fact that the original martini was most likely made
with Martini and Rossi vermouth seems too large a coincidence
to ignore.
moonshine Though it is now thoroughly
attached to the illicitly distilled corn liquor indigent
to the southern U.S., the term originated in England. The
1785 edition of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines
it as “white brandy smuggled on the coasts of Kent
and Sussex.” Smugglers tended to do their best work
by the light of the moon, thus their product came to be
known as moonshine liquor. The word crossed
the Atlantic in the mid-1800s and became popular in the
South as increasingly heavy liquor taxes encouraged distillers
to operate underground.
N
nightcap The once popular idea of having
a stiff drink before retiring is in reference to the idea
it would keep you warm, much as the stocking nightcaps
of the day were used to keep a sleeper’s exposed
head warm (this was before central heating).
O
on the cuff Waiters and bartenders of the early
1900s 
would often keep track of running tabs by making
pencil marks on the stiff cuffs of their starched white
shirts, so “on the cuff” came to mean “on
credit.” Considering the forgetful nature of drunks,
it’s little wonder it later came to mean “on
the house.”
on the house This most heart-warming of expressions
popped up in print in 1889. The house being referred to
was a public house, longhand for pub.
on the wagon Though it didn’t appear in print
until 1904, this defeatist phrase existed in earlier forms
as “on the water-wagon” and “on the water
cart.” The temperance movement of the time would
take the figurative to the literal and drive water wagons
from saloon to saloon, encouraging drunkards to get on
board and savor some aqua pura. Which some of them no
doubt did, especially if they needed a ride to the next
saloon.
P
paint the town
red First recorded in 1884, this phrase
for a wild night on the town may have a much darker history.
At the height of the Roman Empire, their soldiers made
a habit of painting the walls of a conquered village or
town with the blood of the vanquished. Alternative sources
say it was a metaphor for putting the torch to a town.
You know, just for fun.
party A party originally meant
solely “a
person or individual” but by 1716 it also came to
mean a gathering of parties for social pleasure, for a
party of one is rarely any fun. The verb sense of the
word appeared in the early days of Prohibition, party pooper popped
up in 1951, and tailgate party started being used
in 1970 to describe what the drunks in the parking lot
were up to.
pass out In the 1800s it meant the same thing as the
euphemism pass on, as in “Children, your
father has passed out of this world.” By 1915 it
came to mean the current, more temporary departure from
this earthly realm.
plastered While
humans have been getting drunk since time eternal, they
didn’t start getting plastered until
1912. Before then plaster meant “to apply a remedy to; to soothe.” And
what remedy is more soothing than a good dose of liquor?
pub An abbreviation of public house,
which originally meant “any building open to the public” (1574).
By 1669 the public house became an “inn that provides
food and is licensed to sell ale, wine, and spirits” and
fully transformed into what we think of as a tavern in
1768. The first printed mention of a pub crawl appeared
in 1910.
puke Drunkards
were puking as early as 1598. Probably a derivative of
the German word spucken (to spit),
it first appeared in print in Shakespeare’s As
You Like It: “His acts being seven ages/At
first, the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s
arms.” Strangely,
it wasn’t recorded as a noun for the physical manifestation
of puking until 1961. The word’s relative up
chuck appeared around the same time: chuck meaning “to
throw,” thus a slangy reversal of throw up.
R
rail/well drinks While western states tend to use well to
describe uncalled liquor, the East prefers rail.
Both names come from where the bottles are stored: the
easily accessed rack directly behind the bar. In some cases
the rack is a metal enclosure with a drain (a well)
and other times its a shelf with a rail to keep
the bottles in place.
red-eye The
White Mule Distillery put out something called Red Eye
Whiskey in the latter part of 1800s, but American frontiersmen
were ordering shots of red eye as early as 1819. Hollywood
cowboys brought the colorful term back to life, but where
did it come from? Some insist it was raw whiskey that often
left you red-eyed in the morning, others say it was
named for its crimson tint, which, in lieu of aging it
in a barrel, saloon keepers would conspire by adding whatever
was on hand, including soap, red ink, red peppers,
chewing tobacco, Jamaica ginger, tea, coffee, molasses
and bitters.
rotgut While it’s easily understood
why our forefathers called cheap, harsh liquor rotgut,
it is surprising to learn how long the word has been around.
Long before the victims of Prohibition complained about
having to drink “bootleg rotgut that would kill a
herd of buffalo at fifty feet,” drunkards were gritting
their teeth and calling “unwholesome liquor” rotgut as far back as 1633.
round This has meant “a quantity of liquor served
to a 
company at one time” at least as early as 1633.
It is most likely called such because it was (and is)
customary to drink them in a circle facing one another.
rum Originally
called rumbullion (1651)
by Richard Ligon, an American who happened upon the stuff
in Barbados. His review wasn’t exactly glowing: “Rumbullion
alias Kill-Devill . . . is made of suggar cane distilled,
a hott, hellish and terrible liquor . . . will overpower
the senses with a single whiff.” The world rumbullion formerly
existed as either Royal Navy jargon for “an uproar” or
Creole slang for “stem stew” (it’s not
difficult to imagine the uptight Mr. Ligon applying either
meaning to the devilish liquor.) It was shortened to rum three
years later, but its reviews didn’t get any
better — in 1654 a General Court Order was issued
in Connecticut to seize and destroy “whatsoever
Barbados liquors, commonly called rum, Kill Devill or
the like.” Demon rum was
first coined by Timothy Arthur in his 1854 temperance play “Ten
Nights in a Barroom,” and it wasn’t long before
the phrase came to describe all forms of “evil” alcohol.
S
saloon An
Anglicized version of the French salon (a
large public hall), it took 19th century Americans to
turn it into the type of place you wouldn’t mind
spending all your free time in.
shot This came to mean a drink of straight liquor as
early as 1676, probably an analogy of the kind of shot fired
from a cannon. Since many of the drinking vessels of the
day were metal cylinders, it’s easy to make the
association, except this sort of shot you didn’t
try to duck (not without your friends calling you a sissy,
at least.)
skid row Seattle natives will insist it’s
actually Skid Road, after their still existing
street, but they forget nearly every logging community
of the 19th and early 20th century had their own skid
row or road. So called because the road leading
from a lumber camp was generally laid with wooden skids
to facilitate the rolling or skidding (dragging) of freshly
cut timber, usually in the direction of a river or mill.
Loggers tended to build temporary shanties along the road
and thus skid row came to mean “a part of
town inhabited by loggers” around 1906. When all
the local timber was harvested, the loggers would move
on, leaving their ramshackles behind, and by 1915 skid
row came to mean a cheap, disreputable district, usually
populated by dives and dipsomaniacs. The term on the
skids has a similar origin: skid roads were
generally built on a downward slope and once you were on
the skids you were heading downhill at a steady pace.
sloshed In 1844 slosh meant “to splash
about in mud or water”, and 30 years later it arrived
in the saloons and came to mean “to pour carelessly.” Sloshed as
in inebriated appeared around 1900, undoubtedly
because you’re likely to slosh your drinks
while sloshed.
slur From
the Medieval East Frisian sluren (to
go about carelessly), it was eventually applied specifically
to the careless (I prefer carefree) speech of
drunks during the 19th century.
sot Originally sott,
this Old English term (borrowed from 
the
French) was directed at a stupid or foolish person, though
not necessarily drunk. It wasn’t
until 1592 that this insult stuck to those who were “stupefied
with drink.” So the next time someone accuses you
of being a “drunken sot,” tell them, “Yes,
but you’ve managed it sober.” Zing!
souse As
early as 1387 this meant “to pickle or
steep in vinegar.” It was applied to drunks at the
beginning of the 17th century, based on the idea they
were pickled in alcohol. Which, if you’ve ever mistaken
vinegar for cooking sherry, is a far better thing.
speakeasy Though
they became popular during Prohibition, drunks were sneaking
into unlicensed saloons called speakeasies as
early as 1889. Though opinions differ, the most logical
theory suggests patrons were encouraged to speak easy (or
softly) while talking about or actually in the saloon,
as loud conversations tended to attract Johnny Law.
swill The
verb sense is a derivative of the Old English swillan (to
gargle), and came to mean “to
drink greedily” at the beginning of the 16th century.
To call beer swill is to compare it to “liquid
refuse fed to pigs” (1553), which may bring to mind
more than a few keggers you’ve attended.
T
tab This
small, unassuming word (that so often plays David to our
wallet’s Goliath) didn’t
start out that way. Before it was abbreviated in 1889 it
went by the ringer tabulation. It’s easy
to see why it was shortened—can you imagine the
drunken snickers to the bartender’s
cry of “Who in tarnation is gonna pay this tabulation?”
tavern If
you think you’re insulting your local
tavern by calling it a boarded-up shack, think again.
First appearing in print in 1286, tavern initially
meant a wine shop; it didn’t become a proper place
to drink until around 1440. From the Old French taverne,
a type of shack or shed made with boards.
teetotaler The
source of this term for a person so determined to not have
fun he will even refrain from drinking is a bit murky.
Some believe it makes reference to those determined to
drink only tea as a beverage, but it seems unlikely they
would suddenly forget how to spell their preferred beverage.
The more likely theories are 1) it was used in a speech
by a temperance leader in England (1833) in the form of T-total (some
say he stuttered, but he later swore he was merely emphasizing
how totally abstentious he really was); and 2) signing
a temperance pledge originally meant you would only refrain
from hard liquor (beer and wine were still kosher), but
a NY temperance society started the fad of putting a T
next to their signatures, inferring they would be totally temperate.
The admonishing term teetotalitarian first appeared
in Somerset de Chair’s 1947 satire The Teetotalitarian
State.
three sheets to
the wind While it’s easy to think
of sheets as sails, they were actually the ropes used
to adjust a sail’s position. Since most ships of
the day (the expression emerged in the 1700s) had three
masts, if all three sheets became untied and were blowing
in the wind, the ship’s course would become very
erratic indeed. Thus, being three sheets to the wind evokes
the image of being out-of-control drunk and most likely
drifting in the direction of Blackout Island.
tie one on First
recorded in 1951, this phrase for getting 
smashed begs
the question, “Tie what on?” Why,
a bun, of course. Until the 1950s, bun was
commonly used in place of bender (it still is in the U.K.). Tie
a bun on (compare to the contemporary phrase get
your drink on) predates tie one on by 50
years, but when bun fell out of favor, it fell
out of the phrase as well. Bun, by the way, is
most likely a corruption of bung, archaic Scottish
slang for intoxicated.
tight Though
this word for drunk isn’t used much
anymore, pick up any book by F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest
Hemingway and you’ll discover it was quite popular
with the Lost Generation set. First substituted
in print for drunk in 1830, it may be related to the bygone
expression “tight enough to burst,” meaning
very full (of booze, say) indeed.
tippler In
the 14th century a tippler was
a seller of liquor rather than an avid consumer. Perhaps
related to the Norwegian word tipla (to drink
slowly), it came to mean a habitual drinker 200 years
later. Tipsy,
or slightly intoxicated, was used to describe the natural
state of the tippler as early as 1577.
toast Originally
a toast specifically
meant to salute the health of a certain beautiful or popular
woman (literally, she was the toast of the town). Spiced
toast was used to flavor the drinks of the time,
and the original toasters declared the woman’s charms
spiced the drinks more than any silly piece of dried bread.
tosspot This rather quaint name for a drunkard describes
what they called fun: our 16th century brethren tossed
back pots (a pot was a type of drinking vessel), much as
modern inebriates throw back shots.
tumbler Though now it means an unadorned drinking glass,
the original tumblers (circa 1700) were called
such because they had a rounded bottom, making it impossible
to set it down without it tumbling over and spilling.
It was undoubtedly designed to encourage guests to keep
their minds on what’s at hand.
U
under the table There was a time when
all under-the-table dealings were conducted by drunks.
The first mention of alcohol inducing one to this low,
but perhaps happy state is from 1921—it wasn’t
until thirty years later that it came to mean doing something
in secret.
W
wet one’s
whistle Many believe this refers
to whistles 
that
were baked into the handles of 17th century drinking mugs
(so as to alert the bartender to your thirst), but this
seems rather unlikely. Contemporary bartenders will bristle
at the mere snapping of fingers (can you imagine how they’d
react to a roomful of shrill whistles?) and their forerunners
were probably no different. If I may unsheathe Occam’s
razor, the simpler and much more likely explanation is
that it’s merely a humorous
reference to wetting one’s mouth (ever try to whistle
while parched?) with a nice drink. Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales describes a gentlelady who had partaken in
more than her share of ale as: “So was her jolly
whistle well y-wet.”
wingding This
amusing slang for a wild party (since the 1940s), was formerly
1920’s hobo slang for
a fake seizure executed with the intention of attracting
sympathy and perhaps a little pocket change.
white lightning First
applied to “cheap, raw whiskey” in
1781, it is generally thought to be called such because
raw, unaged whiskey is clear (or white) and tastes like,
well—if you’ve tried it you know, if you
haven’t
you can probably guess. —Frank Kelly
Rich
