"Oil as spiritous drink?

[Wilson Gray]

I hate when that happens! Sorry about that, Joel. I should simply have
given you the info and left out the extra stuff, such as I'm
continuing to add, even as we speak.

The correct answer is: HDAS appears to have 1917 for simple "oil" as a
spiritous drink. But HDAS's oldest, clearly-attested cite is only from
1918. It appears to me that you have an antedating, if you have a
clear 1917. But we - you and I - won't know till Jon bringeth down the
tablets in his response.

-Wilson

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 8:47 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Oil as spiritous drink?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Yes I mean "alcoholic beverage" (is that different from "spiritous
> drink?  :-) ) -- but in the bare, without any modifier.
>
> The quote is:
>
>           oh boss
> you ask too much of us we have no flair for toil
> we d rather daily dally thus-imbibing joyful oil
> you can t expect a man to souse
> and do work for your business house
>
> The date is November 14, 1917.
>
> [The hyphen probably is intended to be an em-dash; this was written
> on a manual typewriter, without that character, and two extra
> head-butts would not have been appreciated by Archy.]
>
> I see that OED3 has a draft revision March 2008, for "oil n.1", with
> "C2. In extended use {dag}d. Strong drink, as oil of barley, oil of
> malt. Cf. sense 5. Obs.", latest citation 1881, and all quotations
> are of the form "oil of <something>".  I observe:
>
> There are no citations of just plain "oil"  (C is "Combinations and
> phrasal collocations", of course).
>
> Which was not obsolete at least as of 1917; and I'll bet it can be
> found much later.
>
> The reference to sense 5 is mysterious; that's "5. In pl. The sector
> of the commodities or stock market represented by oil or oils (now,
> esp. petroleum); shares in an oil or petroleum company." (?)
>
> Joel
>
> At 5/17/2008 12:26 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
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>>
>>You mean "oil" as in "ignorant-oil" = alcoholic beverage? HDAS has 1917.
>>
>>-Wilson
>>
>>On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:50 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> > Subject:      "Oil as spiritous drink?
>> >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > When does "oil" as spiritous drink (by itself, not as "oil of
>> > barley", etc.) appear?  I couldn't locate this sense in OED2.
>> >
>> > Joel
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>-----
>>  -Sam'l Clemens
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org