The Schrapnel Papers -------------------------------------------------Spring/Summer 2004
So you think etymology is easy, do you? You think all
you have to do is find your word in The Oxford
English Dictionary and have their monster
abbreviations page memorized to figure it all out. Or
maybe your word in question can be found in one of those
idiot friendly word origins dictionaries, huh? Well,
you're screwed. The history of certain words is not
always obtained by so much low-level scholarship or
bookworming about in a few reference volumes. There are
words out there that defy definitive biography, words
whose past is murky at best and seem to have dropped into
the language gumbo from somewhere outside of this
dimension, at a time basically unknown. Can you name
one? Of course you cannot. You're sitting there on the
leather sofa under sixty watts of soft light wondering
why a literary magazine such as this prints an essay that
immediately badgers and challenges the reader; that is
you. You query yourself, "Who does this Schrapnel cat
think he is anyway," because you are middle aged and was
once a beatnik. You see, you manage a chain of small
shops that specializes in herbs, foods devoid of
preservatives, and weird teas. You sip your cocktail, a
vodka gimlet made with Rose's lime
juice and Ketel One imported from the
Netherlands. It has been a good quarter. Yes,
cocktail. You've come a long way from the grape
and grain parties at the Commune, a.k.a. the abandoned
railroad station. Thus my case in point is right there
under your nose, which nowadays must be regularly trimmed
along with your moustache. Cocktail is one of
those words of mysterious lineage, with a proverbial
spotted past. We all know what cocktail means, what it is. It's a
mixed drink consisting of at least one kind of alcoholic
ingredient and a minimum of one wet non-alcoholic
companion. In the broadest sense of the definition
nowadays a cocktail can be anything from a bourbon and
cola to a Zombie, a
multi-ingredient blender drink made with several kinds of
rum, various fruit juices, and the occasional eye of
newt. Generations past have defined cocktail more
specifically. For instance, early to mid 19th century
mixologists made a cocktail with booze, bitters, sugar,
and aromatic flavorings. Cocktail also has a specific
denotation in medical jargon and street drugs slang, but
we are not going astray and beside the point today . . .
the point here being that the word's origin is a moot
adventure in etymology along a road lined with posturing
louts, losers, and probably a few drunks. Chronologically, the oldest of theories on the birth
of cocktail oozes from an 1891 article in a New
York magazine of dubious repute. Remain seated. Story
goes that a Toltec nobleman had a lovely daughter named
Xochitl, whom he used as a
delivery girl to his king. Xochitl
brought to the king an intoxicating libation
discovered by her father. Consequently his highness fell
in love with the cute wench and named the drink after
her, Xochitl. How the nomenclature became attached to
modern liquid delights is hard to imagine.
Xochitl, a nahuatl word for
flower, is properly pronounced SHO cheel.
Nahuatl is an ancient language of Mexico, spoken by the
Toltec empire (10th to 12th century) and has barely
thrived in central America since the Aztecs and others
routed the Toltecs and took over, many many moons ago.
Then came the Spaniards. The centuries-long series of
linguistic ignorance and slovenly usage that had to have
repeatedly taken place for
Xochitl to
morph into cocktail in the modern lexicon is
unimaginable, even under the influence of a quart of the
continent's worst tequila. It makes you wonder if
T.S. Eliot, in all of his
glorious snobbery, is not on to something when he
suggests that the principal difference between
Romanticism and Classicism is one of maturity (to say
nothing of sanity); that romanticism is philosophically a
childish and naïve worldview fondled by the largely
unwashed. Yet this very old story of cocktail's
roots is charmingly romantic, is it not? It rings
bells. Another colorful origins theory dates from the
American Revolution and the Pennsylvania inn of one Betsy
Flannigan, who reportedly used the tail feathers of
roosters for swizzle sticks. One narrative says she stole
the original rooster from a supporter of the British,
thus initiating a tavern tradition. She ate the bird as
well. Another tale has Betsy serving a multicolored drink
to a soldier, who observed that the beverage contained
all the colors of the rainbow, just like a cock's tail.
Get it? The use of a bird's tail feathers in alcoholic swirl
is said to have survived through the American years of
Prohibition (1919-33) as a way of flagging drinks
containing whiskey and its ilk, a warning to nondrinkers.
The wispy accessory looks pretty too, as long as the
feather is clean and free of lice. Then there is the connection with the cocktailed
horse, one whose tail is bobbed for a flamboyant effect.
Liquid cocktails are often known for their kick, a kick
that rivals a solid slug from a horse's hoof, and a belt
often strong enough to "cock the tail" of the imbiber.
This theory is another load of dung, though, as is a
related cocktailed horse etymology that suggests that
since such animals are believed NOT to be thoroughbreds,
but of mixed lineage, the name cocktail transfers to the
drink, itself a mixture. Some lexicographers also suggest that cocktail is a
corruption of the French coquetel, which denotes a
recipe for mixed wines. Or the word could derive from the
West African word for scorpion, kaketal, because
cocktails sting too. Then there are cock tailings, the
dregs left at the bottom of a barrel of booze that can be
drained through the cask's spigot (cock) to be used to
fashion very cheap and dangerous drinks, like
Kahlua or
Jagermeister. But back to the roosters … another tale declares
that cocktail evolves from the name of the bread baked
with mixed spirits, called cocked ale, and fed to
fighting cocks prior to matches, to make them, well,
cockier I guess. Adds the very reliable Michael Quinnion
of World Wide Words: "Cock-ale was indeed
an English drink at one time, made by a complex recipe
that really did include a chicken, but that isn't the
source [of cocktail], either." Penultimately, another freaking American origins
theory claims that an early 19th century New Orleans
apothecary named Antoine Peychaud served a brandy, sugar,
water, and bitters libation in a double egg cup called a
coquetier. The drink came to be named after the
serving vessel, which of course gets corrupted over the
years into cocktail. Whatever, it seems cocktail has been
around, though now in spoken English its denotation is
generic, not as specific as it was to some folks way down
the family tree, where the name conjures a drink similar
in recipe to the contemporary Old Fashioned. Look it up
in your bartender's guide. But would you just not know it! The wheels of
etymology seem never to rest. For if you have perused
that controversial tome, The
Wal-Mart Shakespeare, you will note in
that edition's elongated version of King
Lear a surprising scene, omitted from every
printed copy of the great tragedy, wherein lies another
suggestion of the origin of the word cocktail, and
arouses wonder as to whether The Bard himself may not
have coined the term. The passage in question in
The Wal-Mart
Shakespeare follows Act III, scene vii,
the shocking blinding of Gloucester; and if it is indeed
a formerly lost snatch of The Bard's original manuscript
it is one of his most outrageous and racy bits of comic
relief. To the doubters of the scene's authenticity,
TW-MS's
editor-in-chief, Cosmo Dreemcretin, says, "Why the hell
not? Why the hell can't it be Shakespeare's own words? I
mean, what the hell. Didn't he often follow really
horrifying parts of his melodramas with classic cases of
farce and things? Hello! How about that knocking on the
door of Macbeth, or the grave robbers in
Hamlet? You suckers just can't believe that some
guy without a 'doctor' before his damn name can find
something out about a famous writer that you never knew
about." Whatever. The scene is an odd one that appears to come
out of nowhere, let alone King Lear, as it
contains three characters previously unheard of in the
play, never seen or mentioned again after the scene, and
takes place in a pub somewhere near the heath. A young
man and woman, Harpo and Meander respectively, are
getting tipsy on drinks served by a bartender who is
identified simply as Clown 2. Fortunately, it is a very
brief yet bawdy interlude: Scene viii. A tavern near the heath. [enter Clown 2, Harpo and Meander] Clown 2. Aaarh me lad and lassie, how like ye
me special brew, which by troth be more of me concoction,
as you can see! Meander. Ooooh, Harpo. [slips off of her
stool and into Harpo's lap] Harpo. [grins and gropes]
Meander, my love, my wild, juicy love. Aaargh, my good
innkeeper, and what pray declare do you call your brew,
or 'coction, as you call it? Clown 2. Aaarh, ye beharded snipe, it be merely
my concoction sparned by saucy tales of cock and tail
from the mariners of olde. Harpo. [drooling] Aaarf, ogla
cock and tail and my love we shall partake. And tomorrow
we will sing this cock tail you name by concoction and I
will tell our amorous tale. Hic! Meander. [slobbering and pulling up her
dress] Oh, and here my mister goodcock is your
holy tail, for tales. [staggers and falls]
No, no, the drink, the drink! Oh my dear Harpo! [exeunt Harpo with Meander over his
shoulder] How much more do you need? It seems the words
cock and tail, which come to make up the
compound noun that denotes the beverage, are also used
here in our modern slang sense to mean penis and vagina,
or the necessary ingredients for poontang. Harpo and
Meander are off to engage in sexual intercourse, if they
can remain conscious long enough. They are in this
aroused condition largely due to the strong cocktails
they have been drinking. Again Shakespeare's sense for
the language of low comedy shines, but might it not also
be possible that his coinage of cocktail has been
flying under the radar undetected until just now? Think
about it. This scene seems so totally twisted and fraudulent
that it ironically boomerangs right back to the throwing
arm of verisimilitude. Why not, indeed. The dirty and
digressive mind of Shakespeare is well documented in his
plays. There could be dozens of tasteless scenes like
this one that slipped through the floor boards of various
theaters and studios from Stratford to London, after
being torn from The Bard's drafts by prudish editors and
such. As for how and where Cosmo Dreemcretin found it, he
writes, "Screw all of you. Just wait 'til you see the
cross dressing scenes heretofore deleted from Antony
and Cleopatra, and the original closing where she
makes the asp crawl all the way up her thigh. That
and more are coming in the even bigger and better Second
Edition of The Wal-Mart
Shakespeare, due out late next year, and
also available at selected Sam's
Clubs." So you see, etymology is in no way a snap discipline.
Some roads are a cunning cul-de-sac just off the beaten
path, which in places has been beaten senseless by the
hooves of very large and lumbering animals, some of which
were believed to be extinct. There are metaphors too. But
is it not tantalizing to imagine that cocktail is
yet another word coined by Shakespeare, like
alligator, leapfrog, sanctimonious, jaded, and
obscene? In the final analysis or so, who knows
where in the world cocktail derived? Who cares,
really? So let us just drink to that; but please, no tea,
unless it is spiked with a thick and pungent dark
Jamaican rum. * Darker Shades of Sunshine ;
or Versimilitude
on the Venereal Peninsula (a work in progress on modern
Florida writers) * *
Use this Email link to vent your aghast to the editor or author. Also, you can buy Dr. Schrapnel's first book, The Clan of the Flapdragon, (U of Alabama P, 1997) from Schrapnel himself, and even request that it be signed. Plus, it's a hardcover with dust jacket, fearless Adventurers! Price is $12.00 in the U.S. and includes postage. Send orders to Richard McKee, c/oThe Schrapnel Papers, 1339 Brookside Drive, Venice, FL 34285.
Communications ... Martha Carrier ------ Gigs ... J.J. Jump ------ Librarian ... Linda R. McKee
copyright
2004 by Richard McKee
