[Ads-l] More on "tanglefoot"; "Minie-rifle brandy"; "bootleg"

[Jonathan Lighter]

1859 _Evening Post_ (NYC) (Nov. 8) 2:

The liquor sold in the porter-houses of the First, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth,
Thirteenth and Seventeenth Wards has lately been celebrated for its
certainty to kill within a few minutes after drinking.... "Minie-rifle
brandy,' killing at two hundred yards,must yield in potency to 'tangle
foot whiskey,' a drink now in general use. It is made of diluted alcohol,
nitric acid, boot-legs, and tobacco, and will upset an individual at a
distance of four hundred yards from the demijohn containing it.

[End of quote]

This casts some doubt on the repeated assertion that "bootlegger" came from
a presumed practice of carrying a flask in one's boot - which
has always seemed unlikely to me. (Did they all wear hip-boots, or what?)

The Minie' rifle, btw, was invented by Claude-Etienne Minie' in 1847. It
fired the conical, hollow-based, soft-lead Minie' ball that became infamous
during the Civil War: .58 cal.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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