1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

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