cocktail
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: cocktails
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: cocktails
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: cocktailing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: cocktailed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: cocktailed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A mixed alcoholic beverage.
pos: noun
examples: They visited a bar noted for its wide range of cocktails.
[...] a certain candidate has placed in his account of Loss and Gain, the following items:-- LOSS [...] 411 glasses bitters[,] 25 do. cock-tail
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.
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.
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.
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.
gloss: A mixture of other substances or things.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
examples: Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.
a cocktail of illegal drugs
Motor vehicles, for example, emit a cocktail of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulates, heavy metals and (for diesel) sulphur dioxide.
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.
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."
gloss: A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.
pos: noun
examples: A “cock-tail” is a horse not purely bred, but with only one-eighth or one-sixteenth impure blood in his veins
gloss: A mean, half-hearted fellow.
pos: noun
tags: UK
dated
slang
examples: It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.
gloss: A species of rove beetle, so called from its habit of elevating the tail.
pos: noun
gloss: To adulterate (fuel, etc.) by mixing in other substances.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To treat (a person) to cocktails.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: He dined and cocktailed her at the most exclusive bars and restaurants.
Related words: swizzle
Derived words: 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
virgin cocktail
Translations: