There are almost as many stories about the
origination of the word cocktail relating to drinks as there are
types of cocktail. Most concede that the word is of US origin.
A computerized newspaper database showed up an 1803 article from
New Hampshire satirizing the fast young men of its day by
printing what was purportedly an extract from one of their
diaries - "Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the
head...Call'd at the Doct's, found Burnham—he looked very
wise—drank another glass of cocktail."
On May 13, 1806, the Balance and Colombian Repository of Hudson,
New York, answered a reader’s query as to the nature of a
cocktail: "Cock-tail 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, in as much as it renders the heart stout
and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said,
also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a
person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow
anything else."
In one of James Fenimore Cooper's more obscure novels the salty
Elizabeth “Betty” Flanagan keeps a rough tavern, and Cooper
characterizes her as “the inventor of that beverage which is so
well known at the present hour 1821, to all the patriots who
make a winter's march between New York City and Albany, and
which is distinguished by the name of ‘cock-tail."
Another theory as to
the origin, is ginger was used in the horse trade to make a
horse stick its tail up. If you had an old horse you were trying
to sell, you would put some ginger up its butt, and it would
cock its tail up and be frisky. That was known as “cock-tail.”
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