Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a drunken party.

1931		A. Hardin ‘Volstead English’ in AS VII:2 87: Terms referring to the state of intoxication: At a booze-fest.
1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1957		E. & S. Deak Grand Dictionnaire d’Americanismes.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 87: Booze fest A drinking party.
1980		F. Leiber Sinful Ones 95: The bacchanal shrunk to a precalculated and profit-motivated booze-fest under the direction of a Pan who’d gone all to watery flesh and been hitting the dope for two thousand years.
1997		A. Schimke Great Escapes 104: But for an increasing number of students, the week long booze-fest [i.e. spring break] isn't all it's cracked up to be.
2005		Sun News (Ottawa) [Internet] A retired cop is furious that a recent convention of young Liberals in Windsor turned into a boorish boozefest that kept him awake until the wee hours of the morning.
2010		C. McDougall Born to Run 187: What better than a booze-fest? Everyone gets ripped, goes wild, and then, chastened by bruises and hangovers, they dust themselves off and get on with their lives.

a drunkard.

1901		Times (Richmond, VA) 25 Dec. 6/4: In Germany [...] on Christmas Eve at midnight all the water turns to wine. That would be a comforting thing to the booze artist.
1908		Wisconsin Engineer 13–14 253: Nothing will queer an apprentice quicker than to be known as a ‘booze artist’.
1912		I.H. Gillmore Phoebe, Ernest and Cupid 89: Augusta says that he would be the greatest reporter in the world, if he weren’t a ‘booze-artist’.
1921		R. Watson Spoilers of the Valley 99: Old Sommerville, they called the man, was a terrible booze artist. He was drunk day and night.
1927		I.S. Cobb Ladies and Gentlemen 148: Her establishment had a booze-artist for a proprietor and a hard and aggravating name among the police force.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 12: These men were very popular among workingmen, were what are called Booze Artists, fellows who can drink continuously without getting drunk.
1940		H. Drake-Brockman Hot Gold III i: Scared I’ll turn into a booze-artist if I’m left alone?
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 329: And are they booze-artists! Boy, we thought we could put it away, but they beat us hollow.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 51: It all begun in the first place with Him gettin’ pretty jack of the way all these booze artists and eeler-spielers and loose women, as they’re called, was lairin’ it up.
1974		D. Ireland Burn 89: I’d rather be a live booze artist than make a living outa bitsa faces.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 19/1: booze artist heavy drinker of alcohol; c.1920.
1996		(con. 1950s) in P. Doyle Get Rich Quick (2004) 15: He also asked if my father was still a bludging booze artist, if my mum was still a drunken slut.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2004		C. James Even As We Speak 110: Glumly we learn that he wasn’t just a racist, a wanker, a miser and a booze artist [etc.].

(N.Z.) a fat stomach that has resulted from sustained heavy drinking.

1979		R.J. Williams Skin Deep 17: That’s a booze balloon around his middle region, and his shoulders slope a bit [DNZE].
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

(N.Z.) anywhere dedicated to the large-scale and rapid service of alcohol.

1976		in A. Purdy Storm Warning 2 90: All of a sudden my desk becomes a bar / and I’m in some roadside booze barn / sipping beer .
1979		Gebbie & Mcgregor Incredible 8-Ounce Dream 94: While there appears to be some general consensus that a small cosy neighbourhood tavern [...] is a preferable alternative to a boozebarn sited in the middle of a concrete wasteland, no one wants them in the street [DNZE].
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 18/2: booze barn huge hotel with huge carpark, the 1970s answer for large thirsts and large profits, a social disaster on the wane.
1992		B. Anderson Portrait Artist’s Wife 260: No booze barns here. Not in 1972, my word. Those days are gone.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2005		www.kiwicorner.fr [Internet] Jake […] contents himself by drinking with his mates in the local booze barn and partying at night.
2010		C. Rawlings-Way Sydney 199/1: This swanky art-deco booze barn.

(US) a bar.

1897		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 2 Sept. 1/7: The conventions are adjourning [...] and the booze bazaars [...] are doing a phenomenal business.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 352: I went into the booze bazaar.
1904		‘Hugh McHugh’ I’m from Missouri 44: I became so popular in all the booze bazaars that [etc.].
1909		Williams News (AZ) 21 Aug. 3/5: I went one night with my high-priced thirst to loaf in a booze bazaar.
1910		Truth (Brisbane) 4 Dec. 11/3: [T]he gentleman who was deriving temporary support from the frontal wall of a booze bazaar.
a.1914		C. Sandburg ‘God’s Children’ [poem] God sleeps in a Y.M.C.A. dormitory / And never goes near a booze bazaar.
1922		‘The Magic Glass’ in Flying Cloud ... Old Time Songs 130: I went one night with a high-priced thirst to loaf in a booze bazaar.
1950		R. Service ‘The Duel’ in Rhymes of a Roughneck 18: In Pat Mahoney’s booze bazaar the fun was fast and free.

(US) a fat stomach that has resulted from excessive drinking.

1965–70		in DARE.
1989		T. Thackrey King of Diamonds 38: He was a classic, wearing the booze belly, battered bulb nose, and bib-alls of the rural Saturday night bar fighter.
2003		S. Elliott Politically Inspired 67: I looked sideshowesque, the small bloat of my tiny booze-belly poofed out, my face drawn and haggard.

(US) a drunkard, an alcoholic.

1905

F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 15: ‘Now, ain’t that enough to drive a batty booze bug away from all the good resolutions he could frame up in a year?’.

(Aus./N.Z.) a police van used for random breath tests (for excess alcohol).

1988		Bulletin 110 40: His office is an unscientific jumble of devices ranging from police booze bus blow-bags to the latest in electronic [equipment].
1989		T. Wheeler Australia 32: booze bus - police van used for random breath testing.
2001		Aus. Eng. Gloss. [Internet] Booze bus: Police van used for random breath testing for alcohol.
2005		T. Cantwell Five Sides of the Fence 47: Inside the booze bus are two areas for testing suspected drink driving offenders.
2011		M. Riddell Life, a Little Brown Dog 29: Back in those days, there’s no booze bus or random breath testing for alcohol.

(W.I. Rasta) a drink and dance party, a ‘rave’.

1994

M. Montague Dread Culture 173: Sheba and Josephine waited in line outside a booze can housed in an old warehouse. [...] As cars pulled up and their passengers scrambled out, the line outside the warehouse grew until at last the doors opened to loud blasts of music.

a woman who works in a bar to persuade customers to drink more than they wish or should.

1915

Variety 29 Oct. n.p.: A girl who had been a waitress in a mining town and then graduated to a ‘booze capper’ in a western dance hall [HDAS].

a public house, a tavern.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1873		Sl. Dict. 92: Booze, or Suck Casse a public house.

(US) a bartender.

1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 17: Ordinarily I call the booze clerk by his first name, but when you are cutting into the grape at four dollars per, you always want to say Mr. Bartender.
1902		Boston Globe Sun. Mag. 21 Dec. 7–8: There are [...] the ‘booze-clerks,’ who pass around the ‘suds’ at the ‘boozarium,’ where intoxicating drinks are sold.
1908		Godwin’s Wkly 7 Mar. 4/3: Sayest the booze clerk unto thee, ‘Partake now of this tub of suds, for the house buyeth’.
1911		C. Lockhart Me-Smith 13: He had filled his pocket from the booze-clerk’s sugar-bowl.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 268: In his Day, the Booze-Clerk was Pythias to every Damon who came in for a Pick-me-Up.

(UK/US Und.) a bar, a tavern, any drinking establishment.

1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 97/1: ‘Cum in ’ere,’ said he, pulling me into a ‘boose crib’.
1877		Dodge City Times (KS) 2 June 5/3: Suppose Hayes and Morton should get on a bender and put their jewelry in soak for boose, then it would be appropriate to say they ‘got to the boose joint’ by this means.
1879		Dodge City Globe 5 Sept. in Miller & Snell Why the West was Wild 157: ‘Getting to the booze joint,’ as it were, in good shape, and ‘making a ranikaboo play for ourselves’.
1889		Clarkson & Richardson Police! 350: There is another kind of cracksmen who work on common booze cribs.
1896		Ade Artie (1963) 64: He’s gone right down into his kick and dug up the long green and he’s puttin’ it out at the booze joints.
1905		Central Law Journal LXI 314/1: The next report of the profits of the city booze mill will be short several dollars from that source.
1905		Montana News (Lewistown, MT) 17 May 2/3: Nowhere has the Socialist movement stooped to tghe depth of opening booze joints [...] ‘to get the workers together to teach them’.
1915		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 13 Apr. 4/5: The young lobster who [...] goes into the back doors of booze joints and tries to drink the whole bunch under the tables.
1916		Liahona 229: How much better is a Mormon Tabernacle [...] than is a ‘booze mill’ with its hellish back door family entrance.
1927		C.M. Russell Trails Plowed Under 31: Me and a friend drops into a booze parlor. [Ibid.] 175: The owner of this booze joint.
1929		E. Dahlberg Bottom Dogs 206: He walked into a combination boozing joint and dance hall.
1931		Ade Old-Time Saloon 19: A large slice of the population, even during the high tide of the wet era, shunned the booze joints and rode on the wagon.
1933		J. Dixon Black Adventure 48: Tom and Dick, both well pickled, supervised all the arrangements while the owner of the Booze Crib looked on, anticipation of a heavy week’s taking written on his face.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 48: They are the barrel house habitues, the type you see lying around in [...] booze joints.
1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 271: At the next booze joint, Guy, get me a bottle.
1971		Billboard 14 Aug. 32/1: The kids won’t go to a booze joint, but at a hall or in a Fillmore ballroom you’ll see a real mixture of older hipsters and young hippies.
1993		J.K. Baxter Essential Baxter 87: He has nowhere to go except further into the mountains or deeper into the booze mill.
1997		J. LaMotta Raging Bull 84: [He] set up a fight club, which was largely a cheap booze joint where on other nights he was putting on dirty movies.
2010		R. Smith Wake Up Dead 93: Billy parked up the block from the booze joint, beyond the tepid wash of a solitary streetlight.

see boozorium n.

(US) a saloon, a bar (subseq. use refers to distilleries, often illegal).

1888		Eve. Bulletin (Maysvill, KY) 7 May 4/2: Mary Ann is a nuisance, as is her saloon. Gallagher [...] is notified that he will let ’er go on peril of paying for all the damage she does with her booze factory.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 42: I could see the ducks dropping into the booze factories. [Ibid.] 221: The bright-lighted booze factories. [Ibid.] 269: A corner rum factory that was just opening up.
1904		L.A. Times 31 Mar. pt 2 7/2: The Pacific Gardens, one of the town’s oldest booze factories, is to be retired from the drink traffic.

a licensed victualler.

1909

press cutting in J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 43/2: You may run down booze fencers as much as you like, but you take my tip that there are more real gentlemen among them than among any other class, upper ten included.

(US) any celebration featuring the consumpion of alcohol.

1906		Sequachee Valley News (TN) 31 May 2/1: Several of our citizens are contemplating attending a booze-fest at Atlanty next week.
1915		Dly Capital Jrnl (Salem, OR) 30 Dec. 4/3: The old year will pass out with the greatest celebration and ‘booze fest’.
1921		N.Y. Tribune 18 Dec. 53/5: Beneath the barracks in Trenton is what [...] an up-to-date young lady in charge of that repository [...] terms a ‘booze fest cellar’[...] One visualizes the merry men of Hesse forgathered there [...] hoisting their steins, clinking their glasses and roaring out with gusto.

see separate entries.

(US) a saloon.

1891		Pittsburgh Dispatch 12 Oct. 2/1: It is gravely told how an assortment of old ‘booze foundries’ called ‘breweries’ were put on the eye of sundry British capitalists.
1901		Daily Public Ledger (Maysville, KY) 8 July 2/2: She [...] is herself a post-graduate in the fine art of whisky-drinking, and frequently toastmaster to a kindred gang in the ‘Ladies Sitting Room’ of a booze-foundry.
1908		Colville Examiner (WA) 26 Sept. 7/3: He is going to be handicapped in not being allowed to drive a bunch of voters up to the trough at the booze foundry.
1919		Coconino Sun (Flagstaff, AZ) 3 Oct. 7/2: A casual visit to the premises had revealed the existence of a highly-organized booze foundry.
1931		A. Hardin ‘Volstead English’ in AS VII:2 86: Places of business for illegal traffic in liquor [...] Booze foundry.
1936		Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 564: The substitution of far-fetched figures for literal description gives him [...] booze-foundry for saloon, and cart-wheel for dollar.
1953		G.H. Otis Bourbon Street [ebook] I found a parking place outside a dilapidated booze foundry [...] I got out and walked into the honky-tonk.

(US) a drunkard.

1934

Weseen Dict. Amer. Sl. 273: [Drinking] Boozegob – A heavy drinker.

(US) one who obtains drink for free thus booze-grafting, persuading others to buy one a drink.

1896		F. Hutcheson Barkeep Stories 59: ‘You was graftin’? Booze-graftin’?’ ‘Naw — not booze graftin’’.
1903		Inter Ocean (Chicago) 25 Jan. 34/7: I couldn’t see anything but the French suds, and I dropped into John L’s [where] I met a bundle of booze grafters [...] and executed the Rube stunt of purchasing a few quarts for them.

(US) a drunkard.

1910		Jackson Dly News (MS) 25 July 4/2: Some of the notorious old soaks and booze-heads in the legislature.
1921		Coosa River News (Centre, AL) 17 June 2/2: The ‘good old days’ when you reactionary boozeheads frequented ‘respectable’ saloons.
1934		Pittsburgh Courier 27 Jan. 13/7: That sensually mad crowd, packed like boozeheads in a cell in jail.
1943		Tennessean (Nashville, TN) 20 Jan. 14/7: [advert[ Dry Cleaning and Laundry Route Open for Good Driver [...] No Booze-Heads.
1950		St Louis Star & Times 20 Feb. 25/3: ‘The other guys [...] stay in the joints and maybe become boozeheads who drink more than they serve’.
1968		Current Sl. III:1 5: Booze freak, n. Drunk.
1989		H. Harrison Bill [...] on the Planet of Robot Slaves (1991) 45: I am going to do a little catching up with you teaheads, dopeheads and boozeheads.
1999		J. Walsh No Mercy 52: Eddie James — pot-head, cokehead, crackhead, boozehead — was stone cold sober and enjoying the drive.
2000		in Boston Phoenix 24–31 Aug. [Internet] No one wants to live with a prude, but a drooling boozehead who prays to the porcelain god each evening isn’t exactly a prime candidate for the spare bedroom either.
2005		tiscali film and tv [Internet] Casting Bullock against type, as a pill-popping boozehead who needs to get on the wagon before she goes off the rails, shows savvy.

1. (US) a prodigious drinker; thus booze-hoisting, heavy drinking.

1903		Rock Is. Argus 30 June 5/4: [He] fell in with a force of booze-hoisters and [...] strayed across the bridge into Rock Island still somewhat under the influence of liquor.
1909		Cameron Co. Press (Emporium, PA) 7 Jan. 1/3: While in Emporium his associates were gamblers and booze-hoistershit the .
1913		B. Sunday [sermon] Pneumonia has a first mortgage on a booze-hoister.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 67: A ‘booze-hoister’ indulges in a liquor spree.
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 10: Don’t be a booze-hoister like me. [Ibid.] 322: Greek, a handsome language spoken by the good old booze-hoisting Hellenes.
1934		Weseen Dict. Amer. Sl. 273: [Drinking] Booze hister – A drinker; a bartender.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 31: booze-hister A drunkard.
2003		symitar ‘Dead Rats’ at allpoetry.com [Internet] He was once a booze hoister, a heavy drinker,.

2. a bartender.

1934

see sense 1.

(US) a dedicated drinker.

1904		Metropolitan Mag. 21:1 8/2: I’d say he was a red-’eaded, skim-milk-eyed, freckle- jawed, stern-first-talkin’ Cardiff booze-hound.
1912		Van Loan ‘The Comeback’ in Ten-Thousand-Dollar Arm 211: If he had n’t been a booze hound, he ’d have been the greatest pitcher in the world.
1925		J. Tully Beggars of Life 78: I could tell he wasn’t a farmer, but an old hobo booze-hound.
1929		(con. 1917–18) C. MacArthur War Bugs 129: A bitterness deriving from the Captain having addressed them as booze hounds.
1930		R. McAlmon ‘Blithe Insecurities’ in Knoll McAlmon and the Lost Generation (1976) 42: Is it just lack of drink and decent food that’s shocked the old boozehound to shivers?
1938		J. Weidman I Can Get It For You Wholesale 221: When I saw some of those boozehounds actually set their glasses down so they could clap their hands, I knew the line was a hit.
1946		Drake & Cayton Black Metropolis 567: With a hophead daddy and a booze houn’ mammy. How he ever gonna be a doctah?
1959		A. Zugsmith Beat Generation 113: I’m not a booze-hound.
1968		N. von Hoffman We are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against 241: Many dope takers [...] give it up and become booze hounds.
1977		(con. 1941) R. Beilby Gunner 128: You bloody booze hound!
1986		S. King It (1987) 831: Carl Kitchener – who looked like a veteran boozehound and smelled like an old horse-blanket.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 86: He was a booze hound [...] A perpetual drunk.
2001		J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 21: Everybody in here’s pissed off, ’specially us boozehounds.
2011		J.J. DeCeglie Drawing Dead [ebook] You’re only ever about two to three drinks away from disaster, any journeyman of the alcoholic booze hound wasteland knows that.
2017		M. Forsyth Short History of Drunkenness 18: We humans are champion booze-hounds.

see booze crib

see bousing-ken n.

see booze-fighter n.

see booze crib

a licensed victualler.

1909		press cutting in J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 43/2: When a bloke is flatch kennurd the booze pushers will give him any rot in the house, and that’s very hard lines.
2004		A. Prodgers ‘Barroom Poetry’ at www.alprodgers.com 29 Dec. [Internet] Of course, nowadays every booze pusher wants us to drink responsibly.

(N.Z.) a heavy drinker.

1962		M.K. Joseph Pound of Saffron 253: The way she talks [...] youd think I was a regular booze-rooster.
1978		West Coast Rev. 13 47/1: The ultimate image he held for himself, sometime booze rooster and womaniser with the golden tongue, was one of destitution.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

(US Und.) a transporter/smuggler of illegal alcohol; the vehicle or vessel used for such transport; thus booze run, the act of smuggling.

1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 35: Booze Run. – A settled or more or less regular business of running liquor across a Federal border, or of smuggling it from place to place. See also ‘runner.’.
1933		Ersine Und. and Prison Sl.
2004		Borneo Bulletin 19 Apr. [Internet] [headline] Police Look For Booze Runner Who Dodged Customs.

a drinking party (usu. in a public house or bar).

1962		J.D. Stern Maverick Publisher 282: You pay Dan and me to look out for your interests and then go into a booze session with the chairman of the Board.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 87: Booze session A drinking party.
1973		R.W. Stallman Stephen Crane 212: A good share of the book, said the [Brooklyn] Eagle, describes a booze session in a saloon and a debauch at old Bleecker's party.
1987		L. Murray Musicians 273: A big booze session in his bungalow after with some of the musicians.
1997		J.D. Matthews Party Is Over 123: No weekend is a weekend without a booze session.
2002		H. Robertson Taipan Agenda 339: He knew [...] that ‘a couple’ was shorthand for a raging booze session. If the rotund Senior Inspector had his way, they would still be at it when the sun came up.

(Aus.) a public house.

1910

Sun. Times (Perth) 23 Jan. second section 1/1: They Say [...] That a Pinjarrah pest recently run into trouble in a Perth booze-shop.

a beer drinker.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

(US) a barman.

1905

F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 77: ‘[T]he big booze slinger that played the doc says he’s goin' to sting Clancy for twenty bucks’.

(US) an alcoholic.

1953

J. Thompson Savage Night (1991) 105: A punchy booze-stupe without enough guts to string a uke.

see it’s the beer talking under talk v.

see separate entry.

(orig. US) to drink heavily.

1889		Oregonian 14 Oct. 3/1: If Dasher gets a dozen or more customers with his own appetite for hitting the booze he will have no trouble making it go [DA].
1891		Morn. Call (San Francisco) 28 Dec. 8/1: Husband, have you been hitting the booze again?
1899		Argus (Holbrook, AZ) 15 Apr. 1/2: If I did have a jag the newspapers didn’t pay for it. I ain’t the only man that hits der booze.
1904		Eve. World (NY) 28 Sept. 10/4: The booze fiend is confronted by object lesons [...] but he keeps on hitting the booze.
1911		R.E. Knowles Singer of the Kootenay 101: But anyhow, he seems discouraged [...] most fellows in his condition would hit the booze.
1914		S. Lewis Our Mr Wrenn (1936) 160: Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle fired me.
1921		Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 19 Nov. 9/2: Fathers too often give up. Get the blues, go to hitting the booze.
1936		K. Mackenzie Living Rough 128: He [...] started hitting the booze and playing around with the white dames.
1948		E. Corle John Studebaker, an Amer. Dream 272: Then he began to hit the booze. Rum-dumb, they call it here.
1952		B. Appel Plunder (2005) 285: You hit the booze by yourself and you’ll turn into an alcoholic.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 189: You will start to hit the old booze quite a bit.
1978		C.S. Smith Fat People 59: We decide to hit the booze.
1999		Indep. on Sun. Rev. 25 July 41: So you hit the booze.
2004		C.A. Hosmer Flashover 56: He bellowed at her that she’d better not hit the booze again.
2012		D. Marshall Curse of Baird Hall 46: That old bugger must have hit the booze hard last night.

drinking heavily.

1886		‘’Arry on Commercial Education’ in Punch 26 Sept. in P. Marks (2006) 124: Jest because I [...] ’appened to go on the booze.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Aug. 10/1: Old Murphy, whose a cuter sort, / Is on the booze again.
1897		W.S. Maugham Liza of Lambeth (1966) 58: She was on the booze yesterday, an’ she ain’t got over it.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Aug. 16/2: He banked his money and then got on the booze in a one-pub hamlet, and after playing up £30 or £40, he walked away, one night, in a state of modified jim-jams to another pub, where he also commenced to streak with scarlet.
1930		(con. 1914–18) ‘I wore a Tunic’ Brophy & Partridge Songs and Sl. of the British Soldier 48: We fought and bled at Loos / While you were on the booze.
1930		K.S. Prichard Haxby’s Circus 137: You been on the booze or what?
1938		S. Beckett Murphy (1963) 46: Cooper [...] who has probably gone on the booze.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 314: Dad never goes on the booze much.
1944		in A. Marshall These Are My People (1957) 143: I was on the booze for eight months once.
1959		A. Sillitoe ‘The Fishing-Boat Picture’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 86: I [...] became even too far gone to turn religious or go on the booze.
1968		P. Terson Apprentices (1970) I iv: bagley: What do you do after a day’s fishing? spow: Go on the booze.
1973		B.S. Johnson All Bull 121: I always drink some before I go on the booze [...] It lines your stomach.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 133: Other terms include getting (or going) on the grog/booze.

to treat one’s companions.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.