hair of the dog See ⇒dog.
half Grindal writes, 'The "half and half ", in other words a half-pint of beer and a small whisky, remains a traditional Scottish way of drinking ... '. (SoW) The expression 'half and half' was commonly used in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, and still survives, while in Edinburgh and the East 'a nip and a half or 'a nip and a pint' was the more usual order, but is now fairly rare.
Jackson considers that the term 'half' as a pub order for a single measure of whisky probably occurs because 'The Scot, appreciating that reality can be mean, feels that the term "half" fairly describes a full single whisky'. (WGtW) Begg explains that, 'In days when measures were generous a "half" was a half gill, but the Scottish phrase "hauf an hauf" literally means half (of a half gill of whisky) and a half (of a pint of beer)'. (BMWoS)
Half is used in Ireland with the same sense, and Magee writes, 'The standard Irish spirits measure is 2½ fluid ounces to the glass, or four "half- ones" to the gill ... '. (IW)
half cut Partly ⇒drunk. See also ⇒cut.
hangover Defined by Keith Floyd (FoH) as 'The unpleasant symptoms that follow the drinking of too much alcohol. These include nausea, vomiting, intense headache, stomach pain and photophobia (sensitivity to light) The symptoms are caused by dehydration, irritation of the stomach lining and a degree of poisoning by the breakdown products of alcohol'. Dunkling notes that 'The word "hangover" has only been in use since the beginning of the 20th century, though we can be sure that many a hangover was experienced before that'. (GDC)
The first attestation of the word with the sense of The unpleasant after-effects of (esp. alcoholic) dissipation' occurs in 1904: 'Brain, usually occupied by the Intellect Bros., - Thoughts and Ideas - as an Intelligence Office, but sometimes sub-let to Jag, Hang-Over & Co'. The drink-related hangover is ultimately related to the verb hang in its sense 'to remain in ... suspense ... To remain unsettled or unfinished', first attested in the 14th century. By the end of the 19th century a nominal sense of 'A thing or person remaining or left over; a remainder or survival, an after effect' had also developed, leading to the current usage.
It is often said, with some justification, that there is no true 'cure' for a hangover except the passage of time, but many and very varied substances and practices have been tried over the centuries in an attempt to ameliorate if not cure the effects of alcoholic over-indulgence. The ⇒hair of the dog is perennially popular, with one such hangover remedy being attributed to Eddie Conlon, 'For a bad hangover take the juice of two quarts of whisky'. The hair of the dog can help to ease a hangover in that it replaces lost blood sugar, though honey may be a more sensible alternative Floyd explains that 'Your monstrous headache may in part be caused by the sudden change in concentration of alcohol bathing the brain and a morning-after drink containing alcohol ... can add just enough alcohol to make the change more gradual'. (FoH) He recommends the vodka and tinned-beef consommé- based 'heavyweight reviver' 'The Bullshot' for particularly serious cases, but perhaps the best known hair of the dog hangover cure is the cognac-based 'Prairie Oyster'. James Boswell records in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides drinking brandy as an effective morning-after headache remedy.
Floyd notes the consumption of soused herring and a glass of Pils as a hangover cure in Germany, while in Australia steak pies and tomato sauce accompanied by cold coca-cola are supposed to have the same effect. In all hangover remedies the aspect of dehydration has to be addressed, and one preventive practice is the consumption of copious quantities of water before retiring to bed, though this is not always such a sound idea if one sleeps at some distance from the nearest bathroom.
There is no shortage of ardent advocates of Kingsley Amis's patent hangover cure, which consists of a vigorous 'morning after' bout of sexual intercourse, though he is at pains to warn that 'guilt and shame' are prominent constituents of what he terms 'the metaphysical hangover', as opposed to the 'physical hangover'. (Kingsley Amis on Drink, 1972)
In 1594 Sir Hugh Plat (The Jewell House of Art and Nature) recommended drinking 'a good large draught of Sallet Oyle' before going on a bender, and also suggests the more palatable alternative of milk, something which Sir Clement Freud echoes in his Book of Hangovers. Perhaps the most curious hangover cure is suggested by Robert Boyle in his Medical Experiments, 1692-94, where he writes, 'Take green Hemlock that is tender, and put it in your socks, so that it may lie thinly between them and the Soles of your Feet; shift the Herbs once a day'.
Addressing the psychological side of the hangover, Vernon Scannell writes, 'I have sometimes wondered if the hangover is not unconsciously desired by the boozer, that he feels a need for it just as some people gamble heavily because they crave the punishment of losing ... '. (The Tiger and the Rose, 1971) He considers the hangover and the gambler's losses to be experiences 'that offer parallels with, or perhaps parodies of, mystical states of consciousness ... '.
hard stuff 'Whiskey and other strong liquors', according to The New Dictionary of American Slang. Hard is a common Germanic adjective, heard in Old English, and with reference to liquor - having the sense of harsh or sharp to the taste - the adjective is first recorded in 1581, 'Neither hard wine is pleasant to the tast, neither haughtie behaviour acceptable in companie.'
The colloquial American sense of intoxicating, spiritous, strong, first occurs in the Boston Times (1879): 'Before the court for selling hard liquor, when he had only a licence for selling ale'. Hard liquor is defined in its modern American sense as 'Whiskey, rum, gin, brandy, as distinct from wine and beer'. (NDoAS) Five years later the first reference to hard stuff occurs, 'Two or three keep of the "hard stuff",' and whilst Partridge acknowledges the term's American parentage he also notes its use from c.l890 in Australia and New Zealand. Rather imprecisely, he defines hard stuff simply as 'intoxicating liquor'. Morton gives a modern Scots example of usage when he writes of Clynelish Distillery in Sutherland stating that if the plant had not been there to buy barley 'Most crofters would otherwise have been selling mainly to illicit distillers, in a desperate attempt to make some money. Either that or making the hard stuff themselves'. (SoA)
Sometimes, particularly in Ireland, the word hard is used by itself, as in Gunning's Word by Tom MacIntyre. 'He was never what you'd call a very resilient class of a man now, was he? Gunning will enquire, raising his glass of the (undiluted) hard, I certainly would never have used that word of him'. (The Word for Yes, 1991)
head See ⇒foreshots.
heart malt The principal, signature malt whisky that is identified with a blended Scotch whisky and its character. 'Cardhu is wonderfully fragrant (Parma violets), and is the base or heart malt in Johnnie Walker brands'. (www.scotchwhisky.com)
heart of the run Also known as the ⇒middle cut. With the relevant sense of the innermost or central part of anything, heart is first attested after 1310, 'That ys in heovene hert in-hyde'. See ⇒cutting.
het pint A traditional Scottish Hogmanay or New Year's Eve drink which was served hot and consisted of ale, whisky, eggs, sugar and nutmeg. The drink used to be carried through the streets and served from large copper 'toddy kettles', as well as being offered to warm 'first foots' at houses they visited. McNeill describes het pint as 'a sort of wassail bowl'. (SC) The adjective het, which corresponds to the modern English hot or warm is first recorded in c.1375, 'With het chein eis, as fyre brynnand', and now only has localised usage in Scotland. JG Lockhart writes of Hogmanay being celebrated at Abbotsford 'with the immemorial libation of a het pint'.
A typical recipe for het pint would suggest putting four pints of mild ale into a saucepan with a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and then bringing almost to the boil. Four ounces of caster sugar are stirred in and allowed to dissolve. Three well-beaten eggs are gradually added, being stirred to prevent the mixture curdling. Half a pint of whisky is then added and gently heated, though it must not be allowed to boil or the ⇒alcohol content will fall.
highball A ⇒cocktail usually based on whisky, and the name given to a six-ounce or eight-ounce ⇒glass now used for serving a variety of cocktails. Jackson explains the origins of the drink's name as follows: 'It is said that some American railroads used a signal with a ball raised on a pole to indicate to the train driver that he was running late. A highball meant "hurry". It also came to mean a simple drink that could be fixed in a hurry'. (PBB)
Dunkling also notes the railroad usage, and refers to an article in American Speech (February 1944) by Professor I Willis Russell: 'He compared French rapide, "express train", an argot term for vin qui saoule rapidement "wine which gets you drunk quickly".' (GDC) Dunkling also records that it has been suggested that 'highball is from a raised glass, resembling a train conductor's raised fist as a signal to depart'. The OED lists both the drink and 'A railway signal to proceed'.
Alan Reeve-Jones writes that a highball 'originally meant a tall, usually whisky, unflavoured spirit drink in the USA - as opposed to, say, a Julep. It is now indiscriminately used for various long iced spirit drinks topped with mineral or plain water'. (DLT) However most highball recipes still specify whisky - usually 1½oz of American whiskey - served on ice in a straight six or eight-ounce highball glass, and in most recipes the drink is filled up with soda or ginger ale. 'He took the flowers out of a vase and poured the water out, and made himself the biggest highball he had ever seen. It did not last very long'. (John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra, 1935)
Highland Along with ⇒Campbeltown, ⇒Islay, ⇒Lowland and ⇒Speyside, Highland is one of the official regional classifications of Scottish malt whisky. For the purposes of whisky categorisation, Highland is now defined as an area north of a theoretical line which follows the old county boundaries between Greenock on the Firth of Clyde in the west and Dundee on the Firth of Tay in the east, but it excludes the golden triangle in north-east Scotland that comprises Speyside.
The term 'Highland' is first attested with regard to Scotland c.1425 - being implied in Highlandman. As well as being a specific geographic area of production, Highland can also be considered a generic term for a style of malt whisky, though there is unquestionably more stylistic diversity in this classification than in any of the others.
The oldest Highland distillery is reputedly Glenturret in Perthshire, which was founded in 1775, and the classification embraces Highland Park and Scapa to the north in Orkney, Talisker on Skye to the west, the now demolished Glenugie by Peterhead in the east and Glengoyne in the south. Glengoyne is situated just a dozen miles from the centre of Glasgow, and the distillery itself straddles the Highland line, though the Distillery Burn which provides its water is actually on the Highland side. By contrast, Auchentoshan Distillery is geographically a Lowland operation, though its water source lies north of the line.
Daiches makes the point that 'Campbeltown and Islays may also be regarded as Highland Malts from which the Highland Malts produced in the north-east of Scotland are often distinguished by being called Eastern Malts ... I have in fact seen Highland malt whisky classified simply as Eastern Malts and Western Malts, the latter including Islays, Campbeltowns and Talisker'. (SW1) Writing in the late 1940s, Marshall Robb divided malt whisky distilleries into three categories, namely Highland (of which he lists 63), Lowland (ten), and West Highland, which included ten on Islay and four in Campbeltown, with Talisker being classified as a Highland malt. According to Cooper, 'In the nineteenth century malt whiskies were somewhat arbitrarily divided into five classes; Islay, Glenlivet, North Country, Campbeltown and Lowland'. (CCtW) In other words, there was no such 'Highland' category as exists today.
The Dictionary of Drink describes Highland malts as 'Light and full flavoured whiskies', which is a necessarily sweeping generalisation. Oban, for example, is a West-coast malt described by United Distillers as being stylistically half-way between an Islay malt and a Highland Speyside malt, while Clynelish from Brora in Sutherland on the opposite coast is certainly closer in style to some Islay malts than it is to many Highlands. Such is the stylistic range within the Highland category that, although there are no official sub- divisions, many experts do sub-divide in order to group similar malts together. Divisions such as Eastern Highland, Island, Northern Highland, Perthshire and Speyside therefore occur in the whisky industry. Grindal notes that many blenders now classify the Campbeltown malts as Highland.
The great Scottish folklorist Calum MacLean, brother of the poet Sorley, wrote in his excellent study The Highlands that the Highland area 'is divided from the Lowlands by a line which is clearly observable on orographical maps and extends from Stonehaven through Comrie and Aberfoyle to Helensburgh on the west'. To the geologist this 'Highland line' is the Highland Boundary Fault, with the Highland side consisting of older, harder rocks than are found in the Lowlands, but definitions of just what is Highland vary considerably, with the inhabitants of parts of the Grampian region and much of Caithness, for example, certainly not considering themselves Highlanders.
The first official definition of the Highland area was made in 1784 when the Wash Act 'drew a formal distinction between the Lowlands and the Highlands' as Daiches puts it, for the purposes of differential excise legislation. Daiches points out that 'The Highland line, which separated the two forms of duty, was precisely defined in the Act - the first time that a specified area of Scotland was separated from the rest as the Highlands by Act of Parliament'. (SW1)
Gunn picks out the main points of the line as defined in the Act as follows: 'A certain line or boundary beginning at the east point of Loch Crinan ... Loch Gilpin ... Inverary, Arrochar, Tarbet, north side of Ben Lomond, Callendar, Crieff, Dunkeld ... Fettercairn ... Clatt, Huntly, Keith, Fochabers ... Elgin and Forres, to the boat on the river Findhorn ... '. (W&S) The Highland Line operated as a boundary between two varying areas of excise operation until the introduction in 1816 of the Small Stills Act, and the whisky-making centre of Campbeltown was originally included within the Highland area for excise purposes, though in 1795 the definition was altered, and Campbeltown distillers subsequently had to pay duty at the higher Lowland rate.
Long before the ⇒Wash Act, the qualifying adjective 'Highland' had been applied to whisky produced in 'the Highlands', however imprecisely that term was used, rather than in the Lowlands. Cooper points out that 'Ironically it was the invidious way in which the duty was raised on the whisky produced in the legal distilleries in the Lowlands which gave the homemade Highland whisky its superior reputation. In order to avoid the pernicious Malt Tax of 1725 some of the Lowland distillers mixed unmalted grain with malted barley, sacrificing quality for quantity'. (CCtW) By virtue of this fact - Burns called Lowland whisky 'a most rascally liquor' - the term Highland in relation to whisky frequently implied spirit of high quality. Cooper affirms that 'Historically the Highland malts were considered to be the finest of all, preferred in the early days of smuggling to the product of the licit Lowland distilleries which frequently used substandard wheat, unmalted grain and even oats and root crops in their mash'. (op. cit.,) He continues, 'The Highlands retained their reputation for good honest malt while the Lowland cities went on .to become the great centres of grain distilling'.
hogshead A large ⇒cask for liquids, the capacity of which traditionally varied according to the type of contents and the locality in which it was being used. A statute of 1423 prescribed the contents of a hogshead as 51 gallons of ale or beer, but in 1749 a hogshead of molasses was fixed at 100 gallons, and for some contents it could have a capacity of up 140 gallons.
The modern hogshead has a capacity of approximately 55 Imperial gallons or very nearly 250 litres, and for the purposes of whisky storage and ⇒maturation it is usually made of American white oak.
The first use of hogshead is recorded in 1390, 'Clerico panetrie per manus Fyssher pro ij barellis et j hoogeshed vacuis per ipsum pro floure imponendo xviiid'. The current spelling first appears in 1674, and a number of variants are also recorded, such as hoggeshedes (1392), hoggyshedys (1467), Hugshead (1569), and hogsed (1578) Two Scottish dialect alternatives occur in hogheids (1577) and hogheidis (1634).
Hogshead also has the sense of a caskful of liquor, as well as being the name of the cask itself, and it can therefore be a liquid measure of 55 gallons or 250 litres.
Boswell uses 'hogshead' figuratively in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1773) when he writes that, 'This man is just a hogshead of sense'.
From an etymological point of view, 'hogshead' promises much, but sadly, as the OED points out, 'The reason of the name is uncertain'. The word hog 'originally had reference to the age or condition of the animal, rather than to either pig or sheep ... '; further, the notion of 'yearling ... runs through most of the uses'.
Perhaps, therefore, it may be conjectured that early applications of hogshead somehow referred to the vessel's use as a receptacle for young, immature spirit.
hooch The DoD gives the colloquialism hooch simply as 'drink' in English usage, but specifies 'gin' in the United States, where the noun is chiefly used. It is usually, however, taken to mean alcoholic liquor in general, 'especially inferior or illicit' spirit, according to the OED.
The noun is used by McGuffin 'If the hooch was then watered down a man could easily turn his 5 dollars into 500 dollars'. (IPoP) 'Hooch' is an abbreviation of the Alaskan Hoochinoo, the name of a small Indian tribe renowned for liquor-making, and is first attested in the United States in 1897. According to Gyles Brandreth (Everyman's Modern Phrase and Fable), 'In the years of the Klondike gold rush at the end of the 19th century saloon-keepers there also distilled their own liquor, which acquired the same appellation'.
Hot Irish Colloquial name used in Ireland for a punch made with cloves and cinnamon, Hot Irish is popular in Irish bars during winter months and is often available at sporting events such as race meetings, where it can be invaluable as an aid to the thawing of extremities after watching your Euros fall in a three-mile steeplechase at Fairyhouse or Clonmel. Irish Distillers' own recipe for Hot Irish is as follows: 'Stud a lemon with four cloves. Into a stemmed glass put one measure of Irish Whiskey, two teaspoons of sugar (preferably brown) and the lemon. Fill with boiling water and add a pinch of cinnamon.'