Sitting on a beach, knocking back cocktails—this is the picture of good times. If you’ve never tried the South American cocktail Pisco Sour, you really should; this blend of citrus fruit juice and Pisco liquor slips down pretty easily.
But it’s etymology we’re here to talk about—enough with the daydreaming.
What on earth, then, does a cocktail have to do with a horse? How, in this Word-of-the-day entry, are we going to get you from a lazy drink in the sun to hay-munching horses? It’s simple really, and can all be explained with chickens.
In the early 17th century, the tails of coach horses and hunting horses were often docked. When this happened, the tail resembled that of a cockerel’s; hence the term ‘cock-tail’.
Now are you beginning to see how we will get from a chicken to your Singapore Sling? No? OK…
By the 19th century, the term ‘cocktail horse’ came to mean a horse that was ‘non-thorough bred’. A race horse, then, that was ‘non-thorough bred’ suggested there had been a cock-tailed horse in the pedigree. In The Martins of Cro’ Martin (1856) Irish novelist Charles James Lever writes: ‘She’s a well-bred one, that’s clear.’ ‘Nearly full-bred; the least bit of cocktail in the world.’
By this point, however, cocktail in the sense of an alcoholic beverage, had already come into existence when an unknown individual writing for New Hampshire’s newspaper The Farmer’s Cabinet in 1803 coined the term. In what was apparently a comical article in the form of a journal entry the author wrote: “Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head… Call’d at the Doct’s…drank another glass of cocktail”.
So why did this writer use a term associated with horses for his favourite tipple? Because a cocktail was a non-thorough bred, which means a ‘lack of purety’. You take a pure spirit or liquor, you add sugar, maybe citrus juice or a variety of other ingredients and you get something that is not pure—a cocktail.
This is, most likely, the best explanation of how we get from horses to cocktails.
We remind you to enjoy cocktails in moderation and to never drink and drive.
