Highball (St. Louis, 1888?)

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Sunday, January 7, 2001 2:42 am +0000 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>> _"Highball" Christened In St. Louis_
> ------------------------------------
>    In that year, he says, the younger members favored a drink concocted
>    in an 8-oz. glass, consisting of 1-oz. of bourbon and club soda as
> desired.  In each glass was also placed an "ice ball".  The drink was
> usually called a "Ball".  Many members, however, wanted a bigger drink
> and they would tell the bartender, "Make it a High Ball."

I may have mentioned this on this list before, but my family has a peculiar
meaning for highball, which I've never seen elsewhere.  To us, a highball
is whiskey (I'm not sure if it matters which kind) and ginger ale.  I'd
chalked this up to the fact that my grandmother drank whisky and ginger
ale, so maybe we just limited our use of 'highball' thusly because we had
no use for the other meaning.  But Grandma's been dead for nearly 20 years,
and my mother (related to aforementioned grandmother by marriage only) said
to me last week "we can't have highballs because we don't have any ginger
ale" (we did have club soda).

My family is all from western NY--paternal side from Attica, maternal from
Niagara Falls area.  My mom might've learned the term from my father's
family.  Are we the only people in the world who think that a highball has
to have ginger ale?

Lynne

P.S.  Slightly amusing story:  While in the US last week, a hairdresser,
upon finding out that I live in England said:  "Do they make fun of you
there because you don't have an accent?"



M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320