Etymology

[Troy Sidle]

We may never know definitively where the word cocktail came from. But, what about punch?

Or rum? or whiskey? or Tequila? or Chartreuse?

Anyone have any insight?

[the queneau]

We may never know definitively where the word cocktail came from. But, what about punch?

Or rum? or whiskey? or Tequila? or Chartreuse?

Anyone have any insight?

←

Whisk(e)y is a pretty straightforward one: it's an anglicised form of either the Scots Gaelic "uisge beatha" or the Irish "uisce beatha", both of which mean "water of life".

Chartreuse is named after the Grand Chartreuse monastery in Voiron, where it used to be produced (with Chartreuse being the French for the Carthusian Order of monks).

Tequila is so-named because it's produced in the area surrounding the town of Tequila, in the Jalisco region of Mexico.

Here's Wikipedia's take on the etymologies of Punch and Rum:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_%28drink%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum

Edited July 28, 2008 by the queneau (log)

[davicus]

I came across a book called "Stage Coach and Tavern Days," written by Alice Morse Earle and published in 1900. It offers up a bit of insight on rum:

“Any account of old-time travel by stagecoach and lodging in old time taverns would be incomplete without frequent reference to that universal accompaniment of travel and tavern sojourn, that most American of comforting stimulants – rum.

The name is doubtless American. A manuscript description of Barbadoes, written twenty-five years after the English settlement of the island in 1651, is thus quoted in The Academy: ‘The chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes distilled, a hot, hellish and terrible liquor.’ This is the earliest-known allusion to the liquor rum; the word is held by some antiquaries in what seems rather a strained explanation to be the gypsy rum, meaning potent, or mighty. The word rum was at a very early date adopted and used as English university slang. The oldest American reference to the word rum (meaning the liquor) which I have found is in the act of the General Court of Massachusetts in May, 1657, prohibiting the sale of strong liquors ‘whether knowne by the name of rumme, strong water, wine, brandy, etc., etc.,’”

She goes on to discuss a recipe for something like a Tom & Jerry...

“A famous tavern host of Canton, Massachusetts, had a special fancy in flip. He mixed together a pint of cream, four eggs, and four pounds of sugar, and kept this on hand. When a mug of flip was called for, he filled a quart mug two-thirds full of bitter beer, added four great spoonfuls of his creamy compound, a gill of rum, and thrust in the loggerhead. If a fresh egg were beaten into the mixture, the froth poured over the top of the mug, and the drink was called ‘bellowstop.’”

And also adds to the etymology of the word punch...

“Another universal and potent colonial drink was punch. It came to the English colonies in America from the English colonies in India. To the Orientals we owe punch – as many other good things. The word is from the Hindustani panch, five, referring to the five ingredients then used in the drink, namely: tea, arrack, sugar, lemons, water.”

Edited April 6, 2009 by davicus (log)