Cocktail
A Cocktail is a catch-all term for mixed alcoholic drinks. However, at one point in time, the word Cocktail referred to a specific type of mixed alcoholic drink.
First Recorded Use of the Word "Cocktail"
The earliest known printed use of the word "cocktail" was from "The Farmer's Cabinet", April 28, 1803, p [2]: "11. Drank a glass of coctail--excellent for the head ... Call'd at the Doct's. found Burnham--he looked very wise--drank another glass of cocktail."
Earliest Known Definition of the word "Cock-tail"
In the May 13, 1806 edition of the Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York , where the paper provided the following answer to what a cocktail was:
"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 an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch 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 a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else."
