hari 218

Liquor

Liquor - The name is obviously American, written twenty-five years after the English settled on the island in 1651. It is quoted in The Academy, "The chief tipple they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made from distilled sugar canes, in which the end product ends up a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor."

This is the earliest-known allusion to the liquor rum; the word is held by some antiquaries in what seems rather a strained explanation to be the gypsy rum, meaning potent, or mighty. The word rum was at a very early date adopted and used as English university slang.

The oldest American reference to the word rum (meaning the liquor) was in May, 1657, prohibiting the sale of strong liquors "whether knowne by the name of rumme, strong water, brandy, etc., etc." In some localities in America rum was called in early days Barbadoes-liquor, occasionally also Barbadoes-brandy.

The Indians called it ocuby, or as it was spelled in the Norridgewock, tongue, ah-coobee. Many of the early white settlers called it by the same name. Kill-devil was its most universal name, not only a slang name, but a trading-term used in bills of sale.