Date:  Sun, 7 Dec 1997 17:13:23 -0600
From:  Chris Corcoran <cmcorcor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Cocktail

Perhaps this ground has already been covered, but ...

I believe Dillard has suggested that cocktail is a borrowing from West
African varieties of English. I know that 'cocktail' in Sierra Leone Krio
is the word for scorpion, so presumably Dillard suggests the usage is
analogous to stinger.

Chris Corcoran

At 12:18 AM 12/3/97 -0500, Barry Popik wrote:
>COCKTAIL
>
>   Peter Tamony's papers on "cocktail" probably have everything there is to
>say on this. A turf poem containing "cocktail" was posted here a few days
>ago.
>   This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 October 1904, "Everybody's
>Column," pg. 8, col. 4:
>
>   WHENCE THE WORD "COCKTAIL" (J. C. P.)--"Dear Sir: Can you tell me the
>derivation of the name .cocktail,' that seductive but insidious drink, much
>used by the American 'bon vivant'? Is it a U. S. idiomatic word, or is it of
>an earlier period?
>   When such an authority as Murray's New English Dictionary, which may
>well claim to be the largest, if not the highest, of its kind (half a dozen
>ponderous volumes, and not complete at that) describes "cocktail" as "chiefly
>U. S. (a slang name of which the real origin appears to be lost)" it must be
>presumptuous on the part of a poor "U. S. newspaper man" to open his mouth on
>the subject.
>   In all due fear and trembling, therefore, we would fain suggest that in
>certain parts of Murray's own country, notably in Yorkshire generally and
>Sheffield particularly, beer that is full of life, fresh and foaming, is
>dialectically known as "cocktail beer;" the transfer, in popular,
>rough-and-ready parlance, of the name "cocktail" from a fizzy, foaming,
>life-full beer to a life-imparting, "cocking-up" rouser such as the "U. S.
>cocktail" is credited to be, appears to us a very short step; and we humbly
>beg the privilege of recording the name for your benefit, friend J. C. P.
>   As to the origin of the English dialectical "cocktail beer," it seems
>likely to be, like a score of other similar forms, the outsome of the popular
>blending of two notions--"a tail like that of a cock," and "a tail that cocks
>up."
>
>   This is from the New York Herald, 16 October 1921, section 7, cols. 4-5,
>pg. 6:
>
>Bits of Horse Lore Out of the Usual
>By Martha McCullouch Williams
>(...)
>   WHAT is a cocktail? (...) Harking back to cocktail, it strikes me as
>possible that the cant name comes remotely from the Arab practice of bending
>the tail bone of a newly dropped foal over the forefinger till its upper
>vertebra is dislocated. This insures, after healing, a high carriage of the
>tail--something more barbarously secured by the farrier's practice of
>nicking.
>   Thus the cocktail came to be held an indication of spirit, eke of
>blood--horses showing foot and gameness might well be entitled to it.
>   As to how the name came to fit also a drink here is a theory, not so far
>fetched as some, with a few facts behind it. When Washington fought the
>redcoats for possession of New York town he and his staff rested at a house
>of call in what is now The Bronx, and were there waited on by a buxom
>landlady, a widow who had a fine hand at mixing things spirituous. One day
>she tried a new brew, sipped, then swallowed, then passed the potion as a
>stirrup gup to her guests, already in saddle, saying:
>   "Drink hearty, gentlemen. It's good! I say so. 'Twill make ye each
>feel as sassy as a cocktail."
>   (...)
>
>