[app. f. WHISK v. + -Y1, from its swift movement.] A kind of light two-wheeled one-horse carriage, used in England and America in the late 18th and early 19th c. Also called TIMWHISKY.
1769. Lloyd’s Even. Post, 3–5 July, 15. As a Gentleman was returning to Battersea, in his whisky, his horse took fright, and ran away.
1784. Eliz. Carter, Lett. to Mrs. Vesey, 30 July. Travelling over hill and dale in a whisky.
1794. W. Felton, Carriages (1801), I. 58. The gig from the whiskey also differs materially, the whiskey being constructed on the most simple plan, with the body united to the carriage.
1824. Scott, St. Ronan’s, xiv. It was a two-wheeled vehicle, which … aspired only to the humble name of that almost forgotten accommodation, a whiskey.
1837. W. B. Adams, Carriages, 245. The old One-horse Chaise, or Whiskey, was as heavy as the modern Cabriolet, without its grace of form.
1844. T. Webster, Encycl. Dom. Econ., § 6672. A whiskey or chair is a small chair, not hung by braces, but placed on the shafts, having springs of some kind interposed between them and the axles…. It is made low, and very light.
1879. Louisa Potter, Lanc. Mem., 139. [She] but rarely went out of her own grounds except to church, in a machine which ninety years ago was called a ‘whiskey.’
