A cocktail is a style of mixed drink. Originally a mixture of distilled spirits, sugar, water, and bitters, the word has gradually come to mean almost any mixed drink containing alcohol.
A cocktail today usually contains one or more types of liquor and one or more mixers, such as bitters, fruit juice, fruit, soda, ice, sugar, honey, milk, cream, or herbs.
The earliest known printed use of the word “cocktail” was in The Farmer’s Cabinet, April 28,...
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A cocktail is a style of mixed drink. Originally a mixture of distilled spirits, sugar, water, and bitters, the word has gradually come to mean almost any mixed drink containing alcohol.
A cocktail today usually contains one or more types of liquor and one or more mixers, such as bitters, fruit juice, fruit, soda, ice, sugar, honey, milk, cream, or herbs.
The earliest known printed use of the word “cocktail” was in The Farmer’s Cabinet, April 28, 1803:
“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 earliest definition of "cocktail" was in the May 13, 1806, edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York, in which an answer was provided to the question, "What is a cocktail?". It stated that:
“Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be...
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