In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant look into the myriad stories behind the word cocktail. Does the drink name come from feathers? Horses? Something up a horse’s rump? It’s a weird wandering down etymology lane… This minicast...
An alcoholic who’s been sober for 29 years wonders if she’s overly sensitive to the terms non-alcoholic and alcohol-free being used with reference to food and drink. The problem is that alcoholic has more than one meaning. It can refer to someone...
Responding to our conversation about alternatives to the term mocktail, Rob in Wolcott, New York, reports on our Facebook group that he recently saw the term zero-proof drink to describe an alcohol-free beverage — a sophisticated cocktail of harissa...
The word mocktail refers to a carefully crafted non-alcoholic drink. A listener feels that such beverages should have a more positive name that doesn’t refer to what they lack. Is there a better term for these concoctions? Do you have a better word...
mocktini n. a non-alcoholic drink made to look like a martini. Editorial Note: A mocktini is a kind of mocktail, a much more common term. The “-tini” suffix, indicating a drink similar to a martini, exists in a variety of words such as “appletini.”...
mocktini n.— «Serve the best with this smooth mocktini. It’s always in good taste.…Half-fill martini glass with tonic water, then top off with lemon-lime seltzer. Add lemon twist.» —by Frank Thomas, Karen Lancaster Brown The Mocktail Bar Guide: 200...

