Shellacking

[Joel S. Berson]

Seems quite natural -- liquor --> lacquer --> shellac.

Joel

At 11/6/2010 11:39 AM, you wrote:
>On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 6:56 AM, Michael Quinion wrote:
> >
> > My own take on the background to this word in this week's World Wide
> > Words:
> >
> >  http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/ieyf.htm#N3
> >
> > points out that the fashionable male bright young things of the early
> > 1920s in the US were reported to use a hair lacquer derived from shellac
> > (or, to be careful about it, were said to have "shellacked hair"). A
> > subscriber points out that, as this was the period of Prohibition, the
> > lacquer would have been one of the few preparations lawfully containing
> > alcohol. Might this be the origin of the slang term for being drunk?
>
>I initially discounted this theory, but now I'm finding more and more
>references to shellac being used in Prohibition-era alcoholic
>concoctions. This article (from Early American Newspapers) even refers
>to "the shellac drunk":
>
>---
>"Extraction of Alcohol from Shellac is the Method of some Boozers"
>_Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser_, July 14, 1922, p. 5, col. 1
>Recently a man staggered into a downtown office highly inebriated, so
>much so, in fact, that it became urgent that the be taken home. All
>attempts to identify him by papers in his clothes failed, the only
>paper on his person being a scrap of hotel stationery bearing this
>inscription: "One 3 gallon can, one brown jug, and a quart of
>shellac."
>Those who were in the office at the time thought that the recipe must
>have been a joke, but it appears that it is not so, according to men
>who have had experience with the liquor hounds since Brother Volstead
>took a hand in the affairs of the American drinker.
>It is said that the habitual drunkard, when he cannot get whiskey,
>must have alcohol of some kind. To obtain this they have been known to
>purchase pure shellac in large quantities, and give it the blotter
>treatment. This consists of dipping the blotter in the shellac,
>withdrawing it and squeezing the blotter into another receptacle. Thie
>blotter will absorb the alcohol. From observation of the case
>mentioned above, the shellac drunk is anything but a pleasant
>experience.
>---
>
>--bgz
>
>--
>Ben Zimmer
>http://benzimmer.com/
>
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