Minicast Bonus: Cocktail

Welcome to another mini-cast 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 said he’s never found a definitive answer.

Martha, can we help?

Well, there’s certainly lots of stories floating around.

There’s the one about how French people would sip intoxicating beverages from egg cups known as coquetier, or about using a rooster feather to stir early versions of such concoctions.

Then there was the one about the Aztec princess.

Oh, how many of these are there?

There must be hundreds of these.

Lots of stories.

But I know for certain there’s so little evidence to back these up.

Yeah, pretty much none for those stories.

All right.

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

Well, when you look into serious historical research on the topic, I do think you get closer to an answer.

And as far as I can tell, there are two strong possibilities.

And both of them, oddly enough, involve not roosters, but horses.

Ha! I love it. Go on.

Well, what’s believed to be the first written definition of the word 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.

And it reads in part, cocktail, they hyphenated, cocktail, is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.

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

Okay.

So, etymologist Anatoly Lieberman notes that in the 18th and early 19th centuries, horse owners often docked the tails of certain horses.

Now, these were working animals, not your thoroughbred racehorses.

And that little bit that was left of their tail ended up sticking up like a rooster’s tail.

So, for that reason, they were called cocktailed horses and later just cocktails.

Right. So the horse tail sticks up. It’s literally cocked, which means juts up at an angle.

And it looks like the tail of a rooster.

Yeah. 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.

Right. Now, if we 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 Lieberman looks at that, he focuses on the fact that it mentions water.

In other words, he notes that the drink called a cocktail wasn’t quote-unquote purebred.

That is, it was a mixture. It was watered down a little bit.

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

Right, and that’s the explanation I’d like to believe.

Mm-But you’re saying there’s another one that you’d rather not believe?

Yeah. And that one comes from David Wondridge.

He’s the author of The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails.

Now, he’s widely known as an authority on cocktails, and he’s researched their history extensively.

In fact, this book is almost 900 pages long.

Wondridge argues that the named 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 in pep would use, well, a suppository of peeled ginger to make the poor horse lift its tail and look a lot perkier.

Like I said, it’s pretty awful.

No kidding.

So when Wondrich sees that same 1806 definition of a cocktail, he’s not focusing on the fact that it’s diluted with water.

What he focuses on is the fact that it’s, quote, a stimulating liquor.

That is, a bracing drink that would pick you up and fortify you, that would cock your tail, in other words.

And not only that, he’s found evidence that around that same time, the term cocktail could also apply to non-alcoholic beverages that were laced with a little ginger or cayenne to perk you up.

So, yeah, I don’t like associating cocktails with that awful practice of gingering a horse.

In fact, I don’t like it being associated with docked tails, but I’m afraid I do find the latter one plausible.

You find it plausible.

Well, of course, etymology is not destiny.

Words often stray far, far afield from the original sense and we’re not held responsible for those origins.

Right.

And on a happier note, I will say that I’ve really come to adore the word mocktail.

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.

Yeah, but you know, in the meantime, I found myself ordering so many mocktails, and I find it really does convey the meaning quickly and efficiently.

And I got to tell you, Grant, last week I had a blueberry lavender lemon drop mocktail that I actually dreamed about that night.

I mean, it was that good.

Oh, that sounds delightful.

Well, Terry, thank you for that question.

I hope this helped.

I’m not sure that it did, but that’s etymology for you.

It’s always a labyrinth.

And if you have a question about language and the origin of words, you can always write to us, words@waywordradio.org.

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

That’s toll free to call or text in the United States or Canada.

For A Way with Words, I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Cheers.

See ya.