13 / 184
CONSTITUTIVE AND DERIVATIVE
13
knew that roosters had tails and it was a common opinion
that the effect of a cocktail was to make the imbiber feel
somehow like a rooster with his tail stuck up. Anyhow,
if the cocktail was properly made, it had the effect of at
least stimulating the appetite. But that much admitted,
the derivation is still an open question and the date un–
decided.
As my habit, when at a loss for the origin of a word,
is to appeal to one of the foremost lexicographers in our
land, I put the ancestry of "cocktail" up to Dr. Frank H.
Vizetelly, managing ,editor of the Standard Dictionary.
Then it developed that even that eminent root specialist
found himself stumped when it came to pinning an exact
date on the word and getting down to the bottom of its
family tree. But Dr. Vizetelly was kind enough to go
into the matter with great thoroughness.
"The
cocktail,"
Dr. Vizetelly replied, "goes back at
least to the beginning of the 19th century, and may date
back to the American Revolution.
fo
is alleged by one
writer to have been a concoction prepared by the widow of
a Revolutionary soldier as far back as r 779. He offers no
proof of the statement, but a publication, 'The Balance,'
for May r 3, 1806, describes the
cocktail
of that period as
'a stimulating liqubr composed· of spirits of any kind,
sugar, water and bitters. It is vulgarly called "bitter sling,"
and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion.'
"Washington Irving, in 'Knickerbocker' ( r 809), Page
241, said of the cocktail: 'They (Dutch-Americans) lay
claim to be the first inventors of the recondite beverages,
cock-tail, stone-fence, and sherry cobbler.' Hawthorne re–
ferred to
cocktails
in 'The Blithedale Romance' ( 18
5
2), as
did Thackeray in his 'The Newcomes' (1855), but neither