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cocktail (KOK-tayl) - n., a non-thoroughbred horse; any of various mixed alcoholic drinks, usually served cold; something resembling or suggesting such a drink by being a mixture of often diverse elements or ingredients, including esp. a mixture of drugs or medicines; an appetizer served as a first course at a meal.
It is frequently speculated that the first sense -- which is definitively oldest, dating from the 1750s, and which comes from the practice of cutting short and thus raising ("cocking") the tails of horses with mixed breeding -- is the source of the drink name, but the evidence for this is very slim. Regardless, first references to the drink (in the 1830s) make it clear that originally it was a specific mixed drink, apparently similar to what's now called an Old Fashioned, and only later applied to mixed drinks in general, and then still later the expanded senses.
External obligations continue -- posting is likely to be light next week.
---L.
It is frequently speculated that the first sense -- which is definitively oldest, dating from the 1750s, and which comes from the practice of cutting short and thus raising ("cocking") the tails of horses with mixed breeding -- is the source of the drink name, but the evidence for this is very slim. Regardless, first references to the drink (in the 1830s) make it clear that originally it was a specific mixed drink, apparently similar to what's now called an Old Fashioned, and only later applied to mixed drinks in general, and then still later the expanded senses.
External obligations continue -- posting is likely to be light next week.
---L.
