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Question: Where does the word cocktail come from?

(Posted by: RALPH on 2010-07-11 07:06:31)

Why are drinks called cocktails

Posted by: Freesumpin on 2010-07-11, 07:25:43

The earliest known printed use of the word “cocktail� was in The Farmer’s Cabinet, April 28, 1803. “Drank a glass of cocktail — excellent for the head . . . Call’d at the Doct’s. found Burnham — he looked very wise — drank another glass of cocktail.� The earliest definition of "cocktail " was in the May 13, 1806, edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository "What is a cocktail? ". It replied: “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.� .

Posted by: Jonah on 2010-07-11, 08:24:35

From the story I heard - back in Colonial America a public house was serving a mixed drink and stirring it with the tail feather of a chicken. They didn't have swizzle sticks back then, and the quill end of the feather would have worked for mixing a drink. So it was a drink mixed with a tail feather from a cock - thus cock-tail and finally cocktail.

Posted by: oikos on 2010-07-11, 18:30:02

That's one of the more debated terms in the English language and there are stories to support some very fanciful ideas. The Oxford English Dictionary calls it a "slang term of which the real origin appears to be lost. "