Minicast Bonus: Cocktail

Grant: Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words. Today we’re tackling a question from Terry Wilkins.

Terry wants to know about the origin of the word cocktail. He’s looked in several dictionaries, and he says he’s never found a definitive answer. Can we help?

Martha: Well, there certainly are lots of stories floating around. Like the one about how the French people would sip intoxicating beverages from egg cups known as coquetiers. Or about using a rooster feather to stir early versions of such concoctions. Or the one about the Aztec princess — 

Grant: Okay, okay. We get the picture. Lots of stories, but zero evidence to back them up.

Martha: That’s right. None.

Grant: So Martha, is there anything we can say for sure about why we call a mixed drink a cocktail? 

Martha: Well, when you look into serious historical research on this topic, I think you do get closer to an answer. As far as I can tell, there are two strong possibilities — both of which, oddly enough, involve not roosters, but … horses.

Grant: Go on.

Martha: What’s believed to be the first written definition of cocktail — that is, a mixed drink containing alcohol — appears in an 1806 collection of essays and observations published in Hudson, New York, called The Balance, and Columbian Repository. It reads in part: “Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” 

Now, this is where the two different interpretations come in.

Grant: Okay.

Martha: Etymologist Anatoly Liberman notes that in the 18th and early 19th centuries, horse owners often docked the tails of certain horses. Now, these were working animals, not         thoroughbred racehorses. And the little bit that was left of their tail stuck up like a rooster’s tail, and for that reason, they were called cock-tailed horses, and later just … cocktails.

Grant: Right. And we do have plenty of evidence that the word cocktail applied first to that kind of horse — at least as early as the 1750s.

Martha: Correct. So let’s go back to that same 1806 definition of a cocktail as: “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” When Liberman reads that, he focuses on the fact that it mentions that the drink contains water. In other words, he notes that the drink called a cocktail wasn’t quote-unquote “purebred.” Rather, it was a mixture, watered-down a bit.

Grant: So in other words, Liberman says that the drink called a cocktail is diluted by other ingredients, just as the horse called a cocktail comes from a varied gene pool.

Martha: Correct. That’s the explanation I’d like to believe.

Grant: But you’re saying there’s another? One that you’d rather not believe?

Martha: That’s right. The other is from David Wondrich, author of The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Now, Wondrich is widely known as an authority on cocktails and has researched their history extensively.

Wondrich argues that the name cocktail for this type of drink goes back to the old horse-trader’s trick called “gingering.” Now mind you, it’s an awful practice: An owner who wanted to sell a horse that was tired or otherwise lacking pep would, well … use a suppository of peeled ginger to make the poor horse lift its tail, and look much perkier. Like I said, it’s pretty awful.

Grant: No kidding.

Martha: So when Wondrich sees that same 1806 definition of a cocktail, he doesn’t focus on the fact that the beverage is diluted with water. He focuses on the fact that it’s, quote, “a stimulating liquor” — that is, a bracing drink that would pick you up and fortify you — to cock your tail, in other words. Not only that, he’s found evidence that around that same time, the term cocktail also could apply to non-alcoholic beverages laced with a little ginger or cayenne to perk someone up.

So yeah, I don’t like associating cocktails with that awful practice of gingering a horse to make its tail stand up like a rooster’s tail. But I’m afraid I do find it plausible.

Grant: [response if you like, or just proceed] And of course, in any case, etymology is not destiny — words often stray far, far afield from their original sense.

Martha: On a happier note, I will say that I’ve really come to adore the word mocktail.

Grant: Oh really? A couple of years ago you were complaining that you didn’t like it. You thought it didn’t seem right to define that kind of drink by what’s not in it — in this case, that there’s no alcohol.

Martha: Yeah, but in the meantime I’ve found myself ordering so many mocktails, I find it really does convey the meaning quickly and efficiently. And I tell you what, last week I had a Blueberry Lavender Lemon Drop mocktail that I actually dreamed about it all night! SO good!

Grant: Well, thanks for that question, Terry. And if you have one, you can always write to us at words@waywordradio.org.

Martha: Or you can call or text us any time of the day or night: 877-929-9673.

Grant: That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada. For A Way with Words, I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha: And I’m Martha Barnette. Cheers!