Slang: Drink Slang

Leaving the plate and turning to liquid refreshments, the American slang vocabulary of drink is extensive and wide ranging, and demonstrates a clear-cut linguistic creativity. It seems that forms of alcohol and specific drinks (“grape” for wine, “dago red” for cheap red wine, “brewski” for beer, and the all-encompassing “hooch” for alcohol) require slang names. This is also the case with the places where drinking occurs (a “gin mill,” perhaps, or a “beer emporium”), with the men and women who serve the drinks (“beer jerker,” “doctor,” or “mixologist”), and with the actual act of drinking, from “name your poison” for the “antifogmatic,” “booster,” or “eye-opener” (all describing the first drink of the day) to the “sundowner” or “settler” (the last drink of the night). The slang is, for the most part, jocular and lighthearted, carefully skirting the difficult social issues associated with alcohol. Even the wages of alcoholic sinning—vomiting, hangover, and delirium tremens—are fair game for slang. Rapid-change ephemerality is characteristic of most slang, and the slang of alcohol is no exception to this rule; new terms replace old terms with regularity, and only the catchiest of words survive—”heebie-jeebies” for delirium tremens is an example.