cocktail
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Cocktail
Etymology
Early 17th century, from cock (“male bird”) + tail, in the sense “(a horse with its) tail standing up, like a cock’s”. The origin of the extension to “an alcoholic mixed drink” is unknown. One theory is that it refers to a simulant (gingering), hence a simulating drink; compare pick-me-up.[1] Another attested use is for non-thoroughbred racehorses: these were considered "cock-tailed" due to their docked tails. This may have led to the term "cocktail" (sense 1) being used for an adulterated spirit.[2]
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkɒk.teɪl/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkɑk.teɪl/
- (General Australian) IPA(key): /ˈkɔk.tæɪl/
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Noun
cocktail (plural cocktails)
- A mixed alcoholic beverage.
- Synonyms: mixed drink, (abbreviation) ckt
- They visited a bar noted for its wide range of cocktails.
- 1806 May 13, “Communication”, in Balance and Columbian Repository, volume v, number 19, New York: Hudson, page 146:
- Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called 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.
- 1904, Charlotte Bryson Taylor, “Chapter VI”, in In the Dwellings of the Wilderness:
- Deane opened the fray by declaring, à propos of dinners, that the only proper way to create a cocktail of the genus Martini was to add a half-spoonful of sherry after the other ingredients had been satisfactorily mixed, if at all.
- 1922, Sinclair Lewis, “Chapter 8”, in Babbitt:
- He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon.
- 2011, Mark Polonsky et al., USSR: From an Original Idea by Karl Marx, page 32:
- The cocktail in Britain is a rigidly-defined social institution: each has its own particular meaning—the G & T is the alcoholic equivalent of the interview suit; Pernod and black is an alternative to glue sniffing for repentant trendies, etc.
- (by extension) A mixture of other substances or things.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:hodgepodge
- Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.
- a cocktail of illegal drugs
- 2019, Eliza Hartrich, “Edward IV, the Earl of Warwick, and a Changing Urban Sector, 1461–71”, in Politics and the Urban Sector in Fifteenth-Century England, 1413–1471, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 181:
- This chapter examines how the concurrent phenomena of an assertive monarch, persistent civil war, and economic change affected the political activities of townspeople in three ways: in the relationship between the ‘urban sector’ and the English polity, in the complexion of municipal internal politics, and in the nature of urban participation in the civil wars of 1469–71. In all three of these fields, the particular cocktail of circumstances present in the 1460s encouraged a wide variety of townspeople to become invested emotionally and materially in the course of national politics, as they had not been during much of the 1450s.
- 2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, page 38:
- Terry Gourvish, the lead author if the authorised commercial history of BR, described the new BTC structure thus: "The conclusion must be that the combination of a few undynamic railwaymen, underpaid full-timers (Commission and General Staff) and poorly-paid part-time businessmen was not a very potent managerial cocktail."
- A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.
- 1868, Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, volume ii, John Murray, page 11:
- A “cock-tail” is a horse not purely bred, but with only one-eighth or one-sixteenth impure blood in his veins
- (UK, slang, dated) A mean, half-hearted fellow.
- Synonym: coward
- 1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC:
- It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.
- A species of rove beetle, so called from its habit of elevating the tail.
Derived terms
- AIDS cocktail
- atom cocktail
- atomic cocktail
- beertail
- Brompton cocktail
- champagne cocktail
- cocktail ant
- cocktail bar
- cocktail cabinet
- cocktail dress
- cocktailery
- cocktail flu
- cocktail fork
- cocktail frank, cocktail frankfurter
- cocktail frock
- cocktail game
- cocktail glass
- cocktail hat
- cocktailian
- cocktailing
- cocktail length
- cocktail lounge
- cocktail music
- cocktail onion
- cocktail party
- cocktail party deafness
- cocktail party effect
- cocktail party graph
- cocktail peanut
- cocktail sandwich
- cocktail sauce
- cocktail sausage
- cocktail sav, cocktail saveloy
- cocktail shaker
- cocktail stick
- cocktail table
- cocktail tomato
- cocktail waitress
- cocktailwear
- cocktail wiener
- colonic cocktail
- currency cocktail
- Darvon cocktail
- Dubonnet cocktail
- fruit cocktail
- kiddie cocktail
- locktail
- mocktail
- molotov cocktail
- Molotov cocktail
- Myers' cocktail
- phytococktail
- poptail
- prairie cocktail
- prawn cocktail
- prawn cocktail offensive
- scintillation cocktail
Descendants
- → Catalan: còctel
- → Czech: koktejl
- → Dutch: cocktail
- → Esperanto: koktelo
- → Finnish: cocktail
- → French: cocktail
- → Galician: cóctel
- → German: Cocktail
- → Greek: κοκτέιλ (koktéil)
- → Hungarian: koktél
- → Italian: cocktail
- → Japanese: カクテル (kakuteru)
- → Korean: 칵테일 (kakteil)
- → Norwegian Bokmål: cocktail
- → Norwegian Nynorsk: cocktail
- → Polish: koktajl
- → Portuguese: coquetel
- → Russian: кокте́йль (koktéjlʹ) (see there for further descendants)
- → Spanish: cóctel, coctel
- → Swedish: cocktail
- → Thai: ค็อกเทล (kɔ́k-teel)
- → Turkish: kokteyl
- → Vietnamese: cocktail
Translations
alcoholic beverage
|
Adjective
cocktail (comparative more cocktail, superlative most cocktail)
- (obsolete) Ostentatiously lacking in manners.
- 1830, Sporting Magazine:
- It looks very cocktail to be seen riding through the streets of London in a scarlet coat ;
- 1840, The Sporting magazine:
- The Prince had nothing particular about him but a monstrous smart whip with a gold stag for a handle, which was pronounced a very cocktail looking instrument by the Leicestershire farmers, with whom His Serene Highness is no favorite
- 2008, Christine Kelly, Mrs Duberly's War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6, →ISBN:
- She always goes about with a brace of loaded revolvers in her belt!! Very cocktail and no occasion for it
- 1875, Charles Thomas Samuel Birch Reynardson, 'Down the Road': Or, Reminiscences of a Gentleman Coachman:
- Nothing looks so cocktail and muffish on a coach as to see a man learning to catch his whip, and after many futile efforts taking it upside down for this purpose, and twisting the thong round and round with the point downwards, as if he was stirring porridge for a pack of hounds.
Verb
cocktail (third-person singular simple present cocktails, present participle cocktailing, simple past and past participle cocktailed)
- (transitive) To adulterate (fuel, etc.) by mixing in other substances.
- (transitive) To treat (a person) to cocktails.
- He dined and cocktailed her at the most exclusive bars and restaurants.
See also
- swizzle
- See also Thesaurus:alcoholic beverage
References
- Michael Quinion (2004) “Cocktail”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.
- “cocktail”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
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