Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. any alcoholic drink, esp. in phr. a drop of the right stuff.

1825		T.C. Croker Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1862) 205: It’s the right stuff [...] fifty times as good as brandy or rum.
1856		C. Reade It Is Never Too Late to Mend I 180: You give him the right stuff, doctor [...] and he won’t slip his wind this time.
1892		‘F. Anstey’ Voces Populi 234: Ah, she’s got a drop o’ the right stuff in there – see her sniffin at it – it won’t take ’er long to mop up that little lot!
1908		H. Lawson ‘The Exciseman’ in Roderick (1972) 782: I mean a little drop of the right stuff.
1910		H. Lawson Rising of the Court ‘The Exciseman’ 343: ‘Well, I mean a little drop of the right stuff,’ he said, nettled [...] ‘O-o-oh!’ she said, illumination bursting in upon her brain. ‘It’s the dirrty drink ye’re afther, is it? Well, I’ll tell ye, first for last, that we doan’t keep a little drop of the right stuff nor a little drop of the wrong stuff in this house.’.
1934		Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves 168: You inserted in that jug — shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?
1943		(con. 1860–80s) G.A. Little Malachi Horan Remembers 51: It was a neat little thatched place, with a small back room where a man and his friends could come handy by a good glass of the right stuff.
1945		N. Marsh Died in the Wool (1963) 181: Haven’t they got some of the right stuff?
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 26: Having found me restoring the tissues with a spot of the right stuff.
1965		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Confessions 19: Having plenty of the right stuff inside us, we caught the train for Liverpool.
1965		F.J. Hardy Yarns of Billy Borker 80: You know how I loike a drop of the roight stuff?

2. characteristics that make for an admirable person.

1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 26 June 6/2: ‘He is just like one of those natty, fly boys up in Wall Street [...] mashers that think they’re just about the right stuff and that everybody is dead stock on ’em’’.
1899		A.C. Gunter M.S. Bradford Special 203: By gum! the master’s the right stuff!
1914		Day Book (Chicago) 30 Dec. 23/2: He is a crackerjack player and shows he is made of the right stuff.
1930		Yorks. Eve. Post 14 June 7/5: One of them gave me a smack on the back [...] and called me ‘a bit of the right stuff’.
1951		Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 25 Oct. 6/2: 99-year-old Mrs Ellen Ripacher voted for her ‘national hero’ Mr Churchill. ‘He is made of the right stuff,’ she said.
1960		L. Davidson Night of Wenceslas 104: [W]ondering how a girl with such attractions and so much of the right stuff could be [...] so bloody irritating.
1979		T. Wolfe Right Stuff n.p.: After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life [...] Any fool could do that .
1980		Illus. London News 1 Jan. 59/1: That special few at the very top [...] the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.
2000		Lehr & O’Neill Black Mass 59: Morris was like the team manager jealous of the jocks [...] he’d even sought to show that he too had the right stuff.
2009		D. Lehr Fence 222: [He] was now seen by the commissioner as having the right stuff to uphold the department’s integrity and standards of conduct.

3. money.

1919		Wodehouse ‘Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg’ in My Man Jeeves [ebook] As a lad who has always rolled tolerably free in the right stuff, I’ve had lots of experience of [cadgers].
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 79: A lad who has always rolled tolerably freely in the right stuff.
1937		J. Curtis You’re in the Racket, Too 189: I’m not saying I couldn’t lay me hands on a bit of the right stuff if you got something worth speculating on.
1941		Dly Record 24 July 5/5: The Right Stuff. ‘Germany short of brass’.

4. attractive women.

1936

J. Curtis Gilt Kid 57: There was some real right stuff about the dump.