Cocktail

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈkɒk.teɪl/

Definitions

1. A beverage composed of various spirits blended with mixers and flavors, as well as an event featuring such drinks being enjoyed by attendees
2. A drink that is a combination of different alcoholic components alongside non-alcoholic mixers, and an occasion for socializing over these drinks
3. A mixed drink consisting of several alcoholic ingredients combined with flavorings and mixers ; an occasion where people gather to enjoy such mixed beverages socially

Etymology: In May 1806 a reader of The Balance, and Columbian Repository, a small newspaper in Hudson, New York, wrote in with a puzzled question. The paper had printed the campaign bar bill of a defeated local candidate, and among the rums and gins was something called a "cock-tail." What was it? The editor replied that it was "a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters," and added a political jab: it was of great use to a candidate, because a person who had swallowed a glass of it was ready to swallow anything else. That reply is the first widely cited printed definition of the drink, though the word had already turned up in American print by 1803. The name was much older than the drink. Since the early seventeenth century English had joined "cock," the male bird, to "tail" to describe something carrying its tail cocked up like a rooster's, above all a horse. In the racing and hunting world this took a more specific turn. Horses that were not thoroughbreds often had their tails docked, so the stump stood up, and such horses were called "cock-tailed." A cocktail horse was a horse of mixed blood rather than pure breeding. Nobody knows how this horse word came to mean a drink, but there are two serious theories. One starts from the docked, mixed-breed horse: a spirit diluted with water and doctored with sugar and bitters was not a pure-blooded drink either, and the name may have been a slangy joke about adulterated liquor. The other points to a dealer's trick called gingering, in which ginger was applied to a tired horse to make it lively enough to carry its tail high. On that reading, a cocktail was a stimulant, something that perked you up, much as "pick-me-up" would later name a restorative drink. The 1806 editor's stress on its being "stimulating" is suggestive, but it proves nothing. Other stories are easier to dismiss. One claims the word comes from a Mexican "cola de gallo," another from an English brew called cock ale, another from the French "coquetier," an egg cup supposedly used to serve drinks in New Orleans. None has evidence behind it. The most persistent modern legend credits Hiram Codd and his marble-stoppered Codd-neck bottles, which date from decades after the word was already in print. Every one of these tales was invented to explain a name that was already there. At first the word meant one particular recipe: spirit, sugar, water and bitters, essentially what is now called an Old Fashioned. Over the nineteenth century, as American bartending grew more elaborate, it widened to cover almost any mixed alcoholic drink. In the twentieth century it stretched further, from the glass to the gathering, and the cocktail party became an occasion in its own right.

Synonyms: mixed drink, beverage, libation, concoction, mixture

Antonyms: straight drink, neat drink, pure drink, undiluted drink, single spirit