Possible Antedating of "Cocktail"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Here is a possible further antedating:
>
>1789? _The Prelateiad; or, the Rape of the Holy Bottle_ 22 (Eighteenth
>Century Collections Online)  All _Ceylon's_ spicy gifts its moisture
>mends, And _Kyan's_ Pep. its cock-tail virtue lends.
>
>NOTE: The meaning of the above passage is not at all clear, but the
>context seems to relate to alcoholic drinks.

A few more lines might be useful in interpretation ....

I tentatively take "Kyan's Pep." = "Cayenne['s] pepper".

There are two obvious possible original references of "cocktail", both
mentioned, I think, in the OED under "cocktail" [horse]: (1) reference to
the tail of a cock; (2) reference to a cocked (i.e., tilted, jutting,
rising) tail. The latter of these is a possibility for the above, and also
a possibility for the original sense of "cocktail" [drink]: more or less
"cock-tail" = "that which makes one cock one's tail" or "that which makes
one's tail stand up" with an implication of perkiness, alertness, and/or
friskiness [like a docked lamb maybe].

The above doggerel might show an 'adjective' which was ancestral to
"cocktail" [drink] as well as "cocktail" [horse] ... maybe.

-- Doug Wilson

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