Pylimitics

From the roaring twenties to at least the 1960s, a common trope in the US was to declare  “cocktail hour,” which was usually about five pm. It was also pretty common for the average home to include some of the gadgets and accessories for making “cocktails:” pitchers, shakers, various measuring cups, stirrers, and the like. But what about the “cocktail” itself; what is it?

A cocktail, in this context at least, is a mixed drink usually containing alcohol. Nobody knows quite why the word came to have its current meaning. It seems to have shifted meaning pretty abruptly in the first decade of the 1800s. Before that, “cocktail” had at least two meanings — one, of course, was the tail feathers of a male chicken. And as early as the 1600s, when a horse’s tail was trimmed shorter, particularly for racing, it was called a “cocktail” or a “cocktail horse.” 

Then came 1806, and the May issue of Balance magazine explained that “Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” Where that came from, though, isn’t really known. Or, more to the point, it is known quite well to lots of people, and every one of them has a different story. In 1946 (smack in the middle of the cocktail age), H.L Menken wrote about finding at least 40 different etymologies for the word. 

It seems that Betsy Flannigan, who ran an inn somewhere in Virginia, served mixed drinks as early as the 1770s, and used the tail feathers from a rooster as stirrers. Except that her name is sometimes Betty. Oh, and her establishment is also listed in Pennsylvania. Oh, and she didn’t use feathers as stirrers; instead she had created a drink that had the colors of a rooster’s tail. Except that wasn’t it at all; she was a patriot and stole a rooster from someone who supported the English side in the revolution, and hosted a celebration (I guess in honor of getting away with the bird). At that party, it was back to the feathers-as-stirrers idea. 

All of that sounds pretty tenuous and far-fetched, right? Well, pay attention, because this tale is probably much more likely. In the 1790s, in New Orleans, Antoine Peychaud ran an apothecary shop, and experimented with different combinations of drinks. Along the way he came up with “Peychaud bitters”, which is still an occasional ingredient in cocktails. (“Bitters”, by the way, is a generic name for combining some sort of alcohol with aromatic herbs. They’ve had other uses than cocktail mixers; one term common in the past was “patent medicine”.) Anyway, one of Peychaud’s popular concoctions was a combination of brandy, sugar, water, and bitters. He served it in a sort of a large egg cup. Lots of people in New Orleans spoke French, and knew that the cup was called a “coquetier.” On the other hand, lots of other people in New Orleans didn’t speak French, and “coquetier” became “cocktail” through the sort of pronunciation you might have after sampling a few of them. 

By the way, the drink Peyshaud served is still known today; it’s called a “sazerac,” because the kind of brandy originally used to make it was called “Sazerac de Forge et Fils.” But cocktail drinkers are nothing if not adaptable, so during the late 1800s (when it was pretty hard to get the right kind of brandy), they just substituted whiskey and kept the name. 

But wait, we were talking about the origin of the word “cocktail,” and there are more stories. According to one, it really didn’t have anything to do with people in Virginia (or Pennsylvania) or New Orleans. It comes, instead, from West Africa. A “cocktail,” you see, has an effect on you. You might say it has a sting (ok, you probably wouldn’t, but just for the sake of the story…) Anyway, you’d definitely say that about a scorpion, and it turns out that there’s a word for a West African scorpion: “kaketal.” That sort of sounds like “cocktail,” so that’s where the name came from…er, somehow. Pay no attention to the questions that may be arising, right this moment, in your mind. Because that’s probably not it either. Instead…

Various kinds of alcoholic spirits are stored in barrels, or casks. The way you get them out is by using a spigot inserted near the bottom of one end. You turn the valve to dispense the liquid. A valve of that sort is also called a “petcock” (I don’t know why and never mind). Now, stay with this a bit longer. When you get down to the end of the contents of the cask, the last bit is called either “dregs” or “tailings.” The tailings are (probably) not as high quality as the best part of whatever was in the cask, so to get your customers to drink it, you might combine other ingredients — ending up, by default, with a mixed drink made up of the “tailings” from the “petcock” — or, obviously (or not so obviously), a “cocktail”. It could just as well have turned out to be “petling,” of course.

I should pause at this point to make it clear that I am not making any of this up, even though it might, conceivably, seem that way. There are plenty more origin stories for “cocktail,” but those are probably the best of them. And whenever there are that many stories about where a word came from, the first answer is still good: nobody really knows.