8 November 2023
Booze, a slang term for liquor, is probably borrowed from the Middle Dutch busen, but it could possibly be from the Germain bausen. Middle Dutch also had buise, a drinking vessel.
There are a few attestations of the word’s use in Middle English, dating to the fourteenth century, but both noun and verb seem to have been underworld cant terms which did not make their way into general slang until the sixteenth century. The early form of both noun and verb was bouse, with the booze spelling becoming dominant in the eighteenth century.
The earliest known use of the verb to booze in English is from the c.1335 satirical poem Hail Seint Michael:
Hail ȝe holi monkes wiþ ȝur corrin,
Late and raþe ifilled of ale and wine!
Depe cun ȝe bouse, þat is al ȝure care,
Wiþ seint Benet is scurge lome ȝe disciplineþ.
Takeþ hed al to me!
Þat þis is sleche, ȝe mow wel se.(Hail you holy monks with your tankards,
Once and now filled with ale and wine!
Deep can you booze, that is your sole concern,
With Saint Benedict’s scourge you often discipline,
Take heed of all I say!
That this is wise, you may well see.)
And from the same period, we have a use of the word as a noun, but here it refers to a drinking vessel and not the liquor itself. From the poem Mon in the Mone Stond and Strit, this passage describes what to do if one’s quota of brushwood, collected for making hedges, has been stolen:
Yef thy wed ys ytake, bring hom the trous!
Set forth thyn other fot! Stryd over sty!
We shule preye the haywart hom to ur hous,
Ant maken hym at heyse, for the maystry,
Drynke to hym deorly of fol god bous,
Ant oure dame douse shal sitten hym by.
When that he is dronke ase a dreynt mous,
Thenne we schule borewe the wed ate bayly.(If your pledge is taken, bring home the hedge-cuttings!
Set forth your other foot! Stride over the path!
We shall ask the hayward home to our house,
And put him at ease, to achieve mastery.
Drink to him dearly from a full, good booze,
And our dear wife shall sit by him.
When he is drunk as a drenched mouse,
Then we shall secure the pledge from the bailiff.)
We see booze applied to the liquor itself in Thomas Harman’s 1567 A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Uagabones, in a passage warning about being waylaid by rogues who will steal one’s money and use it for buying drink:
And if he be not learnedly able to shewe him the whole circumstaunce therof he wyl spoyle him of his money, eyther of his best garment if it be worth any money, and haue him to the bowsing ken. Which is to some typpling house next adioyninge and laieth their to gage the best thing that he hath for twenty pence or two shyllinges, this man obeyeth for feare of beating. Then doth this vpriight man call for a gage of bowse whiche is a quarte pot of drinke and powres the same vpon his pelde paie adding these words.
(And if he is not cogently able to relate to him the entire circumstance thereof, he will take from him his money, or his best garment if it is worth any money, and have him to the boozing house. Which is to some nearby tippling house and pledge the best thing he has for twenty pence or two shillings; this man obeys for fear of a beating. Then does this upright man call for a gauge of booze, which is a quart pot of drink.)
Folklore has it that the word booze comes from a Philadelphia distiller named Edmund C. Booz who prospered around 1840 by selling whiskey in bottles shaped like a log cabin to promote the presidential run of William Henry Harrison, whose campaign associated him with having come from a rustic life in a log cabin. The folklore is wrong.
Booz did, in fact, sell whiskey in such bottles, but he did not begin to do so until 1858, well after Harrison was long dead. In addition to the British citations quoted above that date to the fourteenth century, the word has been in use in America since at least the early eighteenth century. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary, for instance, defines the verb boose as a vulgar term meaning, “to drink hard; to guzzle,” and the adjective boosy as “a little intoxicated; merry with liquor.” (Vulgar here meaning common, popular.) In another entry, that dictionary defines böuse and booze as vulgar verbs meaning, “to drink freely; to tope; to guzzle,” and böusy as a vulgar adjective meaning, “drunken; intoxicated.” Mr. Booz was taking advantage of his name to market a product that had an already established slang usage and not coining a term.
Sources:
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. booze, n., bouse, n., booze, v., bouse, v.
“Hail Seint Michael.” Die Kildare-Gedichte, W. Heuser, ed. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1904, 155–56. London, British Library, MS Harley 913, fol. 7v. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Harman, Thomas. A Caueat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Uagabones. London: Wiliam Gryffith, 1567, sig. Biiii. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. bousen, v., bous, n.
“Mon in the Mone Stond and Strit.” The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, vol. 3 of 3. Susanna Greer Fein, ed. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015, art. 81. London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, fol. 115r.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. booze, n., booze, v., bouse, v.1, bouse, n.1
Sullivan, Jack. “Booz in the Name and Booze in the Bottle.” Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men! (blog), 27 July 2015.
Webster, Noah. An American Dictionary of the English Language, vol. 1 of 2. New York: S. Converse, 1828. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Unknown photographer, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.