Anatoly Liberman ( Russian : Анато́лий Си́монович Либерма́н ; born 10 March 1937) is a linguist, medievalist, etymologist, poet, translator of poetry (mainly from and into Russian), and literary critic.
35-436: A cocktail is a mixed drink , usually alcoholic . Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups , tonic water , shrubs , and bitters . Cocktails vary widely across regions of the world, and many websites publish both original recipes and their own interpretations of older and more famous cocktails. A well-known 'cocktail' in ancient Greece
70-476: A bartender's guide called How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon Vivant's Companion which included 10 cocktail recipes using bitters, to differentiate from other drinks such as punches and cobblers. Cocktails continued to evolve and gain popularity throughout the 1900s, with the term eventually expanding to cover all mixed drinks. In 1917, the term cocktail party was coined by Julius S. Walsh Jr. of St. Louis , Missouri . With wine and beer being less available during
105-541: A beverage appeared in The Farmers Cabinet, 1803, . The first definition of a cocktail as an alcoholic beverage appeared three years later in The Balance and Columbian Repository ( Hudson, New York ) May 13, 1806. Traditionally, cocktail ingredients included spirits, sugar, water and bitters; however, this definition evolved throughout the 1800s to include the addition of a liqueur . In 1862, Jerry Thomas published
140-504: A common item in liquor stores. In the modern world and the Information Age , cocktail recipes are widely shared online on websites. Cocktails and restaurants that serve them are frequently covered and reviewed in tourism magazines and guides. Some cocktails, such as the Mojito , Manhattan , and Martini , have become staples in restaurants and pop culture. The term cocktail can refer to
175-417: A mix of cognac with a dash of his bitters. Several authors have theorized that "cocktail" may be a corruption of " cock ale ". There is a lack of clarity on the origins of cocktails. Traditionally cocktails were a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters . By the 1860s, however, a cocktail frequently included a liqueur . The first publication of a bartenders ' guide which included cocktail recipes
210-502: A person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else. Other origins have been suggested, as corruptions of other words or phrases. These can be dismissed as folk etymologies , given the well-attested term "cock-tail" for a horse. Dale DeGroff hypothesizes that the word evolved from the French coquetier , for an eggcup in which Antoine A. Peychaud, creator of Peychaud's Bitters , allegedly used to serve his guests
245-521: A wide variety of drinks; it is typically a mixed drink containing alcohol. When a combined drink contains only a distilled spirit and a mixer , such as soda or fruit juice , it is a highball . Many of the International Bartenders Association Official Cocktails are highballs. When a mixed drink contains only a distilled spirit and a liqueur , it is a duo, and when it adds cream or a cream-based liqueur, it
280-481: Is a beverage in which two or more ingredients are mixed . A "spirit and mixer" is any combination of one alcoholic spirit with one non-alcoholic component, such as gin and tonic , whereas a cocktail generally comprises three or more liquid ingredients, at least one of which is alcoholic. Anatoly Liberman Liberman is Professor of Germanic Philology in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch at
315-430: Is a trio. Additional ingredients may be sugar, honey , milk, cream , and various herbs. Mixed drinks without alcohol that resemble cocktails can be known as "zero-proof" or "virgin" cocktails or "mocktails". The origin of the word "cocktail" is disputed. It is presumably from "cock-tail", meaning "with tail standing up, like a cock's", in particular of a horse, but how this came to be applied to alcoholic mixed drinks
350-618: Is an advocate of spelling reform . Liberman was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) on 10 March 1937. His father was killed in action in 1941. He graduated from Leningrad State Herzen Pedagogical Institute (now the Herzen State Pedagogical University ) in 1959, and then taught English for three years at a boarding school for underprivileged children in the Leningrad region. During that time he studied on his own and passed what
385-738: Is known in Russia as the candidate minimum ( Germanic philology , the history of English , German and philosophy , that is, Marxism and the history of the Communist Party of the USSR ). After returning to Leningrad in 1962, Liberman taught English at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (now Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University ) and became an extramural graduate student at Leningrad University . Liberman's academic adviser
SECTION 10
#1732858619456420-559: Is unclear. The most prominent theories are that it refers to a stimulant, hence a stimulating drink, or to a non-purebred horse, hence a mixed drink. Cocktail historian David Wondrich speculates that "cocktail" is a reference to gingering , a practice for perking up an old horse by means of a ginger suppository so that the animal would "cock its tail up and be frisky", hence by extension a stimulating drink, like pick-me-up . This agrees with usage in early citations (1798: "'cock-tail' (vulgarly called ginger)", 1803: drink at 11 a.m. to clear
455-689: The Old Fashioned whiskey cocktail, the Sazerac cocktail, and the Manhattan cocktail. The ingredients listed (spirits, sugar, water, and bitters) match the ingredients of an Old Fashioned , which originated as a term used by late 19th-century bar patrons to distinguish cocktails made the "old-fashioned" way from newer, more complex cocktails. In the 1869 recipe book Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks , by William Terrington, cocktails are described as: Cocktails are compounds very much used by "early birds" to fortify
490-591: The Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), liquor-based cocktails became more popular due to accessibility, followed by a decline in popularity during the late 1960s. The early to mid-2000s saw the rise of cocktail culture through the style of mixology which mixes traditional cocktails and other novel ingredients. By 2023, the so-called "cocktail in a can" had proliferated (at least in the United States) to become
525-528: The University of Minnesota , where since 1975 he has taught courses on the history of all the Germanic languages and literatures , folklore , mythology , lexicography , European structuralism and Russian formalism . He has published works on Germanic historical phonetics, English etymology, mythology/folklore, the history of philology, and poetic translation. He publishes a blog, "The Oxford Etymologist." He
560-734: The University of Rome (1995), a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (2001–2002); a certificate and a prize for a meritorious paper at the International Phonetic Congress 1977, Miami Beach (Florida, 1977), The Katharine Briggs Folklore Award by the Folklore Society (1995), the Verbatim Dictionary Society of North America award for best project of the year (1996), MLA's annual prize for "a distinguished bibliography" (2010). Word Origins…
595-411: The 1980s with vodka often substituting for the original gin in drinks such as the martini . Traditional cocktails began to make a comeback in the 2000s, and by the mid-2000s there was a renaissance of cocktail culture in a style typically referred to as mixology that draws on traditional cocktails for inspiration but uses novel ingredients and often complex flavors. Mixed drink A mixed drink
630-510: The Mysteries of Etymology , Oxford University Press (2024). He has also published articles on individual words and groups of related words. His poetical works include translations and extended commentary on Mikhail Lermontov , Fyodor Tyutchev , Evgeny Boratynsky , and Shakespeare . Original poetry has appeared in the journals Vstrechi [ Encounters ], Poberezh'e [ The Coast ], Novyi Zhurnal [ The New Journal ], and Mosty [ Bridges ]. At
665-416: The United States (1920–1933), when alcoholic beverages were illegal, cocktails were still consumed illegally in establishments known as speakeasies . The quality of the liquor available during Prohibition was much worse than previously. There was a shift from whiskey to gin , which does not require aging and is, therefore, easier to produce illicitly. Honey, fruit juices, and other flavorings served to mask
700-888: The University of Minnesota (a selection): Scholar of the College (1985–88), McKnight fellowship (1994–96), Bush fellowship (1995), Fesler-Lampert Professorship (1999–2002), inclusion in The Wall of Discovery (2006), and an award for distinguished contribution to graduate and professional education (2010). From outside sources (a selection): a fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation (1982), Guggenheim Fellowship (1982), Fulbright research fellowship (1988), NEH Summer Seminars (1980 and 1991), Fellowship at Clare Hall ( Cambridge University , 1984), NEH Summer Scholarship (1995), summer scholarship (for research and lectures) from
735-401: The foul taste of the inferior liquors. Sweet cocktails were easier to drink quickly, an important consideration when the establishment might be raided at any moment. With wine and beer less readily available, liquor-based cocktails took their place, even becoming the centerpiece of the new cocktail party . Cocktails became less popular in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, until resurging in
SECTION 20
#1732858619456770-451: The head, 1806: "stimulating liquor"), and suggests that a cocktail was initially considered a medicinal drink, which accords with the use of bitters. Etymologist Anatoly Liberman endorses as "highly probable" the theory advanced by Låftman (1946), which Liberman summarizes as follows: It was customary to dock the tails of horses that were not thoroughbred [...] They were called cocktailed horses, later simply cocktails. By extension,
805-508: The highly appropriate slang word used earlier about inferior horses and sham gentlemen. The first recorded use of cocktail not referring to a horse is found in The Morning Post and Gazetteer in London, England, March 20, 1798: Mr. Pitt, two petit vers of "L'huile de Venus" Ditto, one of "perfeit amour" Ditto, "cock-tail" (vulgarly called ginger) The Oxford English Dictionary cites
840-403: The inner man, and by those who like their consolations hot and strong. The term highball appears during the 1890s to distinguish a drink composed only of a distilled spirit and a mixer . Published in 1902 by Farrow and Jackson , "Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks" contains recipes for nearly two dozen cocktails, some still recognizable today. The first "cocktail party" ever thrown
875-873: The phonetic variants of a phoneme , cannot be phonologized (by definition). 6) In Germanic, systemic changes of short vowels are reactions to changes in long vowels. Likewise, changes of voiced consonants are triggered by changes in voiceless consonants; what appears as voicing is really weakening. Liberman seeks to build an exhaustive purview of previous conjectures and hypotheses on word origins. His team has collected tens of thousands of articles on etymology from hundreds of journals, book chapters, and Festschriften , which feed his works. His books in this area include Etymology for Everyone: Word Origins and How We Know Them (2005), An analytic dictionary of English etymology: an introduction (2008), A Bibliography of English Etymology (2009), and Origin Uncertain: Unraveling
910-457: The potential of the initial impulse has been used up. The cause of every major change is another change. 3) Stress is not a force but a privileged position in a word, a position in which some oppositions occur that are not allowed in any other syllable. 4) The greatest phonetic changes in the history of Germanic were the concentration of all distinctive features in the root syllable and consonantal lenition as its consequence. 5) Allophones , that is,
945-401: The question, "What is a cocktail?": Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters —it is vulgarly called bittered sling , and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because
980-622: The word as originating in the U.S. The first recorded use of cocktail as a beverage (possibly non-alcoholic) in the United States appears in The Farmer's Cabinet , April 28, 1803: 11. [a.m.] Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head...Call'd at the Doct's. found Burnham—he looked very wise—drank another glass of cocktail. The first definition of cocktail known to be an alcoholic beverage appeared in The Balance and Columbian Repository ( Hudson, New York ) May 13, 1806; editor Harry Croswell answered
1015-424: The word cocktail was applied to a vulgar, ill-bred person raised above his station, assuming the position of a gentleman but deficient in gentlemanly breeding. [...] Of importance [in the 1806 citation above] is [...] the mention of water as an ingredient. [...] Låftman concluded that cocktail was an acceptable alcoholic drink, but diluted, not a "purebred", a thing "raised above its station". Hence
1050-616: Was Professor M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, at that time a Soviet scholar in Old Icelandic literature and Germanic historical phonology. In 1965 he defended his Candidate of Philological Sciences (= PhD) dissertation on a topic of Middle English historical phonology, and in the same year Nikita Khrushchev ordered all the institutes of the Academy of Sciences to open groups for the study of what he called "the Scandinavian experience." Steblin-Kamenskij
1085-611: Was allegedly by Julius S. Walsh Jr. of St. Louis , Missouri , in May 1917. Walsh invited 50 guests to her home at noon on a Sunday. The party lasted an hour until lunch was served at 1 p.m. The site of this first cocktail party still stands. In 1924, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis bought the Walsh mansion at 4510 Lindell Boulevard, and it has served as the local archbishop's residence ever since. During Prohibition in
Cocktail - Misplaced Pages Continue
1120-443: Was in 1862 – How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon Vivant's Companion , by "Professor" Jerry Thomas . In addition to recipes for punches, sours, slings, cobblers, shrubs, toddies, flips, and a variety of other mixed drinks were 10 recipes for "cocktails". A key ingredient distinguishing cocktails from other drinks in this compendium was the use of bitters . Mixed drinks popular today that conform to this original meaning of "cocktail" include
1155-498: Was invited to head such a group at the Institute of Linguistics and invited Liberman to be his full-time junior assistant. There he stayed until his emigration in 1975. In 1972 he defended his Doctor of Philological Sciences dissertation (= West European habilitation ) titled "Icelandic Prosody." At the University of Minnesota since 1975, he spent one year as a Hill Visiting Professor and two years as an associate professor; after that he
1190-641: Was named kykeon . It is mentioned in the Homeric texts and was used in the Eleusinian Mysteries . 'Cocktail' accessories are exposed in the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai (Greece). They were used in the court of Philip II of Macedon to prepare and serve mixtures of wine, water, honey as well as extracts of aromatic herbs and flowers, during the banquets. In the United States, a written mention of 'cocktail' as
1225-405: Was promoted to full professorship. Liberman's main ideas in phonology are as follows: 1) A non-contradictory theory of phonology is probably unattainable, because we lack the means of segmenting the speech current into phonemes. 2) The most adequate model of a phonetic change continuing for centuries, such as apocope and consonant shifts, is that of a change caused by some event and is over once
#455544