cocktail
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɒk.teɪl/
ipa: /ˈkɑk.teɪl/
ipa: /ˈkɔk.tæɪl/
Forms: form: cocktails
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 stimulant (gingering), hence a stimulating drink; compare pick-me-up. 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.
Senses: examples: text: They visited a bar noted for its wide range of cocktails.
text: [...] a certain candidate has placed in his account of Loss and Gain, the following items:-- LOSS [...] 411 glasses bitters[,] 25 do. cock-tail
ref: 1806 May 6, “Rum! Rum! Rum!”, in Balance and Columbian Repository, volume v, number 18, New York: Hudson, page 142:
text: 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.
ref: 1806 May 13, “Communication”, in Balance and Columbian Repository, volume v, number 19, New York: Hudson, page 146:
text: 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.
ref: 1904, Charlotte Bryson Taylor, “Chapter VI”, in In the Dwellings of the Wilderness:
text: 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.
ref: 1922, Sinclair Lewis, “Chapter 8”, in Babbitt:
text: 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.
ref: 2011, Mark Polonsky et al., USSR: From an Original Idea by Karl Marx, page 32:
synonyms: word: mixed drink
word: ckt
hypernyms: drink
<
drink
beverage
glosses: A mixed alcoholic beverage.
examples: text: Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.
text: a cocktail of illegal drugs
text: Motor vehicles, for example, emit a cocktail of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulates, heavy metals and (for diesel) sulphur dioxide.
ref: 2013, Andrew Farmer, Managing Environmental Pollution, Routledge, →ISBN, page 22:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: 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."
ref: 2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, page 38:
synonyms: word: bouillabaisse
word: bric-a-brac
word: catch-all
word: clamjamfrey
word: cocktail
word: gallery
word: congeries
word: crazyquilt
word: disjecta membra
word: farrago
word: galimatias
word: gallimaufry
word: grab bag
word: hodgepodge
word: horse and rabbit stew
word: hotchpotch
word: hotchpot
word: job lot
word: jumble
word: macedoine
word: medley
word: melange
word: mingle-mangle
word: miscellanea
word: miscellany
word: mishmash
word: mixed bag
word: mixture
word: motley
word: odds and ends
word: oddments
word: olio
word: olla podrida
word: omnium-gatherum
word: pastiche
word: patchwork quilt
word: potpourri
word: ragbag
word: salmagundi
word: slurry
word: smorgasbord
word: welter
word: Whitman's sampler
glosses: A mixture of other substances or things.
examples: text: A “cock-tail” is a horse not purely bred, but with only one-eighth or one-sixteenth impure blood in his veins
ref: 1868, Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, volume ii, John Murray, page 11:
glosses: A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.
examples: text: It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.
ref: 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:
synonyms: coward
glosses: A mean, half-hearted fellow.
glosses: 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 strainer
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