"Oil as spiritous drink?

[Wilson Gray]

The Red Sox once had a pitcher known to the bruthaz - and to everyone
else, really - as "Oil Can," because of his propensity for getting
oiled. The drinking, which moved a black newspaper to refer to him as
"The Brother From Another Planet" as a consequence of his drunken
antics on the mound, eventually destroyed his career.

-Wilson

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Oil as spiritous drink?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> HDAS has "the joyful" meaning spiritous drink from 1835, and topselling hymnsmith Isaac Watts has a metaphorical "joyful oil" from at least 1769:
>
>  1769 Isaac Watts _The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament_ (ed. 22)  (London: T. Longman, C. & R. Ware, et al.) 100: Thy Father and thy God, / Hath, without measure, shed / His Spirit like a joyful oil / T' anoint thy sacred head.
>
>  So you get "joyful oil" = "the joyful" by 1900:
>
>  1900 _Annual Report of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture_  (Indianapolis: I.S.B.A.) 1042: He will tie his horse to the hitch rack and run to the nearest fire, and, perhaps, go to a joint where he will take a nip of joyful oil to drive out the cold.
>
>  More expressive than common.  Good find, Joel.
>
>  JL
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: "Oil as spiritous drink?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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 wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
>> 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 ". 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
>>>Content-Disposition: inline
>>>
>>>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 wrote:
>>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> > Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> > Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
>>> > 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
>>> >
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>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>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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>>
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>
>
>
> --
> 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

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