Also cock-tail. [lit. ‘a tail like that of a cock,’ or ‘a tail that cocks up’; the latter is the prevailing notion.]
1. a. A cocktailed horse (cf. COCK-TAILED 1). The fact that hunters and stage-coach horses, the tails of which were generally shortened in this way, were not as a rule thorough-breds seems to have been the origin of the modern turf application. b. ‘Any horse of racing stamp and qualities, but decidedly not thorough-bred, from a known stain in his parentage’ (Dict. Rural Sports, 1870, § 926).
1808. Ellis, Lett., 23 Sept., in Lockhart, Scott, xvii. It is certainly painful to see a race horse in a hackney chaise, but … the wretched cock tail on whom the same task is usually imposed must [etc.].
1842. Thackeray, Fitz-Boodle Pap., Pref. I can’t afford a thorough-bred, and hate a cocktail.
1856. Lever, Martins of Cro’ M., 221. ‘She’s a well-bred one, that’s clear.’ ‘Nearly full-bred; the least bit of cocktail in the world.’
1875. Catal. Sale Sir G. Cholmley’s Stud (Tattersall), 1. The half-bred Stock is well enough bred to win Hunters’ races and Steeplechases … being of the best Cocktail strains.
b. transf. A person assuming the position of a gentleman, but deficient in thorough gentlemanly breeding.
1854. Thackeray, Newcomes, I. 294. Such a selfish, insolent coxcomb as that, such a cocktail.
1889. Academy, 11 June, 409/2. His cocktails who blunder into liaisons with barmaids.
2. (More fully Cocktail Beetle): A brachelytrous beetle which ‘cocks up’ the posterior part of the body when irritated; the Devil’s Coach-horse.
1880. Antrim & Down Gloss., Coffin-cutter, Ocypus olens, the cock-tail, an insect larger than an earwig, of a black colour. Called also the Devil’s Coachman.
1883. Wood, in Gd. Words, Dec., 762/2. The Rove, or Cocktail Beetles found it out nearly as soon.
3. A drink, consisting of spirit mixed with a small quantity of bitters, some sugar, etc. Chiefly U.S. [A slang name, of which the real origin appears to be lost.]
1809. W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 241. They lay claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cock-tail, stone-fence, and sherry-cobbler.
1839. Marryat, Diary Amer., Ser. I. III. 288. He frequents the bar, calls for gin cocktails, chews tobacco, and talks politics.
1882. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xxvii. 268. I would make no more of burglariously entering your premises,… than I would of swallowing a whiskey cocktail.
b. Cf. B. 4.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, I. vi. (1878), 121. ‘Bill … the half-hour hasn’t struck. Here, Bill, drink some cocktail.’
B. attrib. and adj.
1. That cocks the tail. Cocktail Beetle: see 2.
1600. Rowlands, Lett. Humours Blood, Epigr. xxxii. 38. How cock-taile proude he doth his head aduance How rare his spurres do ring the morris-daunce.
1866. Athenæum, No. 2025. 212/3. Vestiges of cocktail fucoids, coralloids.
2. Of or pertaining to the drink cocktail.
1865. Reader, 8 July, 30. Advertisements of quack medicines, patent skirts, cock-tail powders, plantation bitters.
3. Of horses: Not thorough-bred: see A. 1; fig. not in good form, low-bred.
1859. R. Eg.-Warburton, Hunt. Songs (1883), xl. 113. A hundred good horses, both cocktail and blood.
1875. [see A 1].
1888. Lane-Fox, in Pall Mall Gaz., 27 Aug., 9/1. To breed tame fowls and then blow them away from the end of their guns is snobbish and cocktail.
4. Fresh and foaming; said of beer.
1888. Addy, Sheffield Gloss., Cock-tail, fresh and foaming. Only applied to beer.
