booze n.
1. (also boose, booz, boozerine, bues) alcohol, a drink; for earlier uses see bouse n.
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Canting Academy (2nd edn) 4: Having adopted a new Brother, a general stock is raided for Booz. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Hell Upon Earth 5: Booze, Drink. | |
| A Canting Academy, or the Pedlar’s-French Dict. 111: Bad Drink, Quer Bues or Suck. | |
| Scoundrel’s Dict. 16: Drink – Booze. | |
| Kentish Gaz. 16 Nov. 3/3: The mob, inured to booze [...] And spirits guzzled down. | |
| Belphegor (1788) 6: Enter Booze, With a Hatchet, a Wicker Bottle and a Pitcher. [Ibid.] 11: My husband as great and as drunk as a lord, / Thinkas the pleasure is all for Sir Booze. | |
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Boose [...] a drink. |
| Wicklow Mountains 19: And Sir, I’ll remember a pitcher of Booze. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785]. | |
 | ‘The Vestry Dinner’ in Vocal Mag. 1 Feb. 62: None but an ill, foul-mouth’d fellow’d abuse / A snug little dinner and plenty of boose. | |
| Life in London (1869) 319: Since souls of taste could never choose / ’Twixt Alexander’s famous booze, / And Cleopatra’s vaunted fun. | |
| Morn. Chron. (London) 21 Nov. 2/5: They [...] ordered [...] their Claret booze. | |
| ‘The Beak and Trap to Roost are Gone’ in Swell!!! or, Slap-Up Chaunter 49: Nor peck nor booze too have we got, / Nor ken nor dab have we. | |
| Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open. | |
| , | | Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Chicago Sporting Gazette 11 Aug. n.p.: Miss Kit Thompson [...] had better let up on taking other girls’ men into her room and buying booze for them. | |
| Sporting Times 6 July: Kid. The Music Hall Sports are at Alexandra Park on the 23rd, and there will be rare doings on that occasion. Master and Shifter both give prizes, and there will be booze in our drag. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | ‘Brummy Usen’ in Roderick (1972) 76: He’ll be pretty sure to turn up some time, pretty bad with the booze, and want to borrow half-a-crown. | |
| Barkeep Stories 10: ‘[He] looks like he needs a booze pretty bad’. | |
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 14 Nov. 1/1: One actually shouted a booze on the strength of his win. | |
| Toothsome Tales Told in Sl. 105: As an encore she would flash booze of the bottled-in-bond denomination. | |
| Fact’ry ’Ands 170: Maybe iv it ain’t women it’s ther booze. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Oct. 18/1: The churchman loathes the boose, and he / Still struggles to accentuate / This terrible antipathy / Between the pewter and the plate. | |
| New York Day by Day 10 May [synd. col.] The party may be a little spiffly from too much boozerine. | |
| ‘May Day’ in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 157: We want to get some booze, and they won’t sell us none. | |
| Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 11 Aug. 15/4: After a few more boozes he was sweet. | |
| Truth (Brisbane) 1 Feb. 7/5: The pom put over the usual ‘too much boose’ story. | |
| (con. 1920s) Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 341: And whores and whore houses, and booze, all that were like sins of the past. | |
| Really the Blues 21: Any case of booze could be run up to a barrel by mixing in alcohol and distilled water, plus a little burnt sugar. | |
| Fings II i: Drinks all round. Pass round the booze, Paddy. | |
| All Night Stand 32: What we need is some booze. | |
| Inner City Hoodlum 15: Strength that had been sapped from his body by too much booze and too much food. | |
![[Oth]](/static/img/flags/oth.png "(Other)") | House of Hunger (2013) [ebook] Booze was better than girls, even black girls. | |
| 1985 (1980) 201: Free Britons [...] coming out loaded with booze. | |
| Bonfire of the Vanities 360: All they lacked was booze so they could complete the picture by getting drunk. | |
| Homeboy 42: It ain’t buh-buh-booze givin me the whips and jingles. | |
| ‘Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knyght’ in Indep. Weekend Rev. 26 Dec. 1: Laddes drunkke and stinkeing | Loades of booz and scoffe. | |
| Grits 10: It’s Sioned, uv course, lookin fuckin gorgeous, er cheeks flushed a bit pink with thuh booze. | |
| Leaving Bondi (2013) [ebook] All the bottles of choice booze. | |
| Hilliker Curse 30: Booze and dope regulated my fantasy life. | |
| Drawing Dead [ebook] Outside of the booze and pussy I paid for the card-room was my only solace. | |
| Finders Keepers (2016) 11: A booze-filled weekend spent wandering in New York City. | |
| Headland [ebook] It was properly dark when they ran out of booze. | |
| ‘Sunset’ in Broken 177: Booze wasn’t a big enough high. | |
| Stoning 24: [H]ollowed-out cartons of booze. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| One-Way Ride 43: Rocco Fannelli, and Danny Vallo, directors of beer and booze running. | |
| Night and the City 5: I left the booze racket for the movie business. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Muzukuru 68: I finally pitched up sucking a handfull of peppermints in the hope that it would take the edge off my booze-breath. |
3. the act of drinking; a drinking spree.
| Examiner 13 Aug. 7/1: He bought half a gallon of rum. He had a hearty booze before he left the ship, so that when he came on shore he was rather top-heavy. | |
| ‘Nocturnal Sports’ in Universal Songster II 180/1: Come to the finish for a jolly booze arter our ’ard night’ vork. | |
| (con. 1737–9) Rookwood (1857) III v: We’ll have a jolly boose when all’s over. | |
| Hereford Times 12 Sept. 4/4: A Yankee once strayed to a wine-merchant’s vaults; / Quoth the wine-merchant after a ‘booze’: / ‘Here’s a capital sort; shall I send you a pipe?’ / Quoth the Yankee: ‘Why, no friend, I chews’. | |
| Mysteries of London II (2nd series) 154: They have begun their booze. | |
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 76/1: The neebors were again called in and a general booze took place. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 26 Oct. n.p.: What was Mr Alick Watson’s game when he said to Jim Colbert, when he me him on a ‘booze’ — ‘Jimmy come come to the country till I get my crabs fooked’. | |
| Five Years’ Penal Servitude 244: I proposed we should have a booze. | |
| St James’s Gazette 19 Dec. 4, I: There was a great booze on board [F&H]. | |
| Tales of Mean Streets (1983) 43: Savin’ it for a good ol’ booze. An’ now you won’t ’ave one. | |
| Dead Bird (Sydney) 28 June 3/1: ‘It will a good opportunity for a quiet loaf and a booze’. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 4 Nov. 5/6: He saw several young military ‘bloods’ in an advanced state of booze. | |
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 5 June 1/6: The beer being brought in, Royalty and I had a booze. | |
| Escape From the Legion 125: In the Legion we used to say: ‘There is nothing like a good booze to put a man on his feet’ . | |
| (con. WWII) Soldier Erect 116: We’ll have a bit of a booze [...] then drop in on this knocking shop. |
4. a (glass of) drink.
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 25 Dec. 7/2: ‘Let’s have a booze’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 23 Aug. 19/2: After reaching Redfern Station I began to knock around, / And I swallowed sev’ral boozes as a man of cash is bound, / Then my ’bacca-pouch got emptied, and to fill it was my plan, / And I stumbled at that moment up against ‘Cigar Divan.’. | |
| Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life II 395: Everyone in such neighbourhoods is ‘hail fellow, well met,’ especially if he is able to stand a ‘booze’. | |
| press cutting in Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 20/2: Let ’em say what they like, and howl themselves dotty. Their barrikin only makes ’em thirsty and when they’ve got hot coppers through chucking the barrikin out too blooming strong, they go in for a little quiet booze themelves, make no error. | |
| Kia Ora Coo-ee 15 Apr. 17: And after we had sunk a few boozes… We saw the A.P.M. But he saw us first. |
In derivatives
(US) a drunken party.
| ‘Volstead English’ in AS VII:2 87: Terms referring to the state of intoxication: At a booze-fest. | |
| Amer. Thes. Sl. | |
| Grand Dictionnaire d’Americanismes. | |
| et al. CUSS 87: Booze fest A drinking party. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Sun News (Ottawa) 🌐 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. | |
| 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. |
In compounds
a drunkard.
| 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. | |
| Wisconsin Engineer 13–14 253: Nothing will queer an apprentice quicker than to be known as a ‘booze artist’. | |
| Phoebe, Ernest and Cupid 89: Augusta says that he would be the greatest reporter in the world, if he weren’t a ‘booze-artist’. | |
![[Can]](/static/img/flags/can.png "Canada") | Spoilers of the Valley 99: Old Sommerville, they called the man, was a terrible booze artist. He was drunk day and night. | |
| Ladies and Gentlemen 148: Her establishment had a booze-artist for a proprietor and a hard and aggravating name among the police force. | |
| Capricornia (1939) 12: These men were very popular among workingmen, were what are called Booze Artists, fellows who can drink continuously without getting drunk. | |
| Hot Gold III i: Scared I’ll turn into a booze-artist if I’m left alone? | |
| Come in Spinner (1960) 329: And are they booze-artists! Boy, we thought we could put it away, but they beat us hollow. | |
| 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. | |
| Burn 89: I’d rather be a live booze artist than make a living outa bitsa faces. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 19/1: booze artist heavy drinker of alcohol; c.1920. | |
| (con. 1950s) in 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. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. | |
| 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.
| Skin Deep 17: That’s a booze balloon around his middle region, and his shoulders slope a bit [DNZE]. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. |
(N.Z.) anywhere dedicated to the large-scale and rapid service of alcohol.
| in Storm Warning 2 90: All of a sudden my desk becomes a bar / and I’m in some roadside booze barn / sipping beer . | |
| 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]. | |
| 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. | |
| Portrait Artist’s Wife 260: No booze barns here. Not in 1972, my word. Those days are gone. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. | |
| www.kiwicorner.fr 🌐 Jake […] contents himself by drinking with his mates in the local booze barn and partying at night. | |
| Sydney 199/1: This swanky art-deco booze barn. |
(US) a bar.
| Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 2 Sept. 1/7: The conventions are adjourning [...] and the booze bazaars [...] are doing a phenomenal business. | |
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 352: I went into the booze bazaar. | |
| I’m from Missouri 44: I became so popular in all the booze bazaars that [etc.]. | |
| Williams News (AZ) 21 Aug. 3/5: I went one night with my high-priced thirst to loaf in a booze bazaar. | |
| Truth (Brisbane) 4 Dec. 11/3: [T]he gentleman who was deriving temporary support from the frontal wall of a booze bazaar. | |
| ‘God’s Children’ [poem] God sleeps in a Y.M.C.A. dormitory / And never goes near a booze bazaar. | |
| ‘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. | |
| ‘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.
| in DARE. | |
| 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. | |
| 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.
| 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).
| Bulletin 110 40: His office is an unscientific jumble of devices ranging from police booze bus blow-bags to the latest in electronic [equipment]. | |
| Australia 32: booze bus - police van used for random breath testing. | |
| Between the Devlin 76: [I]f a booze bus [...] put a bag on him he’d probably blow the thing to the other side of the moon. | |
| Aus. Eng. Gloss. 🌐 Booze bus: Police van used for random breath testing for alcohol. | |
| Five Sides of the Fence 47: Inside the booze bus are two areas for testing suspected drink driving offenders. | |
| 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’.
![[WI]](/static/img/flags/wi.png "West Indies") | 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.
| 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.
| Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn). | |
| Sl. Dict. 92: Booze, or Suck Casse a public house. |
(US) a bartender.
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Godwin’s Wkly 7 Mar. 4/3: Sayest the booze clerk unto thee, ‘Partake now of this tub of suds, for the house buyeth’. | |
| Me-Smith 13: He had filled his pocket from the booze-clerk’s sugar-bowl. | |
| 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.
| Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 97/1: ‘Cum in ’ere,’ said he, pulling me into a ‘boose crib’. | |
| 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. | |
| Dodge City Globe 5 Sept. in Why the West was Wild 157: ‘Getting to the booze joint,’ as it were, in good shape, and ‘making a ranikaboo play for ourselves’. | |
| Police! 350: There is another kind of cracksmen who work on common booze cribs. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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’. | |
| 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. | |
| Liahona 229: How much better is a Mormon Tabernacle [...] than is a ‘booze mill’ with its hellish back door family entrance. | |
| Trails Plowed Under 31: Me and a friend drops into a booze parlor. [Ibid.] 175: The owner of this booze joint. | |
| Bottom Dogs 206: He walked into a combination boozing joint and dance hall. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Sister of the Road (1975) 48: They are the barrel house habitues, the type you see lying around in [...] booze joints. | |
| Burn, Killer, Burn! 271: At the next booze joint, Guy, get me a bottle. | |
| 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. | |
| Essential Baxter 87: He has nowhere to go except further into the mountains or deeper into the booze mill. | |
| 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. | |
| 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).
| Eve. Bulletin (Maysville, 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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.
| press cutting in 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.
| Sequachee Valley News (TN) 31 May 2/1: Several of our citizens are contemplating attending a booze-fest at Atlanty next week. | |
| Dly Capital Jrnl (Salem, OR) 30 Dec. 4/3: The old year will pass out with the greatest celebration and ‘booze fest’. | |
| 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.
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| 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. | |
| Coconino Sun (Flagstaff, AZ) 3 Oct. 7/2: A casual visit to the premises had revealed the existence of a highly-organized booze foundry. | |
| ‘Volstead English’ in AS VII:2 86: Places of business for illegal traffic in liquor [...] Booze foundry. | |
| 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. | |
| Bourbon Street [ebook] I found a parking place outside a dilapidated booze foundry [...] I got out and walked into the honky-tonk. |
a bar, a saloon.
| Pittsburgh Press (PA) 16 Aug. 21/5: He hopped into a booze garage [...] and proceeded to get ossified. |
(US) a drunkard.
| 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.
| Barkeep Stories 59: ‘You was graftin’? Booze-graftin’?’ ‘Naw — not booze graftin’’. | |
| 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 yearning for alcohol.
| Nebraska State Jrnl (Lincoln, NE) 14 June 9/5: I could see that the booze-hank was strong upon him. |
(US) a drunkard.
| Jackson Dly News (MS) 25 July 4/2: Some of the notorious old soaks and booze-heads in the legislature. | |
| Coosa River News (Centre, AL) 17 June 2/2: The ‘good old days’ when you reactionary boozeheads frequented ‘respectable’ saloons. | |
| Pittsburgh Courier 27 Jan. 13/7: That sensually mad crowd, packed like boozeheads in a cell in jail. | |
| Tennessean (Nashville, TN) 20 Jan. 14/7: [advert[ Dry Cleaning and Laundry Route Open for Good Driver [...] No Booze-Heads. | |
| 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’. | |
| Current Sl. III:1 5: Booze freak, n. Drunk. | |
| Bill [...] on the Planet of Robot Slaves (1991) 45: I am going to do a little catching up with you teaheads, dopeheads and boozeheads. | |
| No Mercy 52: Eddie James — pot-head, cokehead, crackhead, boozehead — was stone cold sober and enjoying the drive. | |
| in Boston Phoenix 24–31 Aug. 🌐 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. | |
| tiscali film and tv 🌐 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.
| 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. | |
| Cameron Co. Press (Emporium, PA) 7 Jan. 1/3: While in Emporium his associates were gamblers and booze-hoistershit the . | |
| [sermon] Pneumonia has a first mortgage on a booze-hoister. | |
| Hobo 67: A ‘booze-hoister’ indulges in a liquor spree. | |
| Arrowsmith 10: Don’t be a booze-hoister like me. [Ibid.] 322: Greek, a handsome language spoken by the good old booze-hoisting Hellenes. | |
| Dict. Amer. Sl. 273: [Drinking] Booze hister – A drinker; a bartender. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 31: booze-hister A drunkard. | |
| ‘Dead Rats’ at allpoetry.com 🌐 He was once a booze hoister, a heavy drinker,. |
2. a bartender.
| see sense 1. |
(US) a dedicated drinker.
| 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. | |
| ‘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. | |
| Beggars of Life 78: I could tell he wasn’t a farmer, but an old hobo booze-hound. | |
| (con. 1917–18) War Bugs 129: A bitterness deriving from the Captain having addressed them as booze hounds. | |
| ‘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? | |
| Shearer’s Colt 101: I hope that in the course of your — er — ha — hum duties as boozehound — I beg your pardon, the slang phrase slipped out accidentally — as entertainment officer for this Company. | |
| 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. | |
| Black Metropolis 567: With a hophead daddy and a booze houn’ mammy. How he ever gonna be a doctah? | |
| Tough Guy [ebook] The girls in the bedroom had heard other riproaring boozehounds before. | |
| We are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against 241: Many dope takers [...] give it up and become booze hounds. | |
| (con. 1941) Gunner 128: You bloody booze hound! | |
| It (1987) 831: Carl Kitchener – who looked like a veteran boozehound and smelled like an old horse-blanket. | |
| Love Is a Racket 86: He was a booze hound [...] A perpetual drunk. | |
| Plainclothes Naked (2002) 21: Everybody in here’s pissed off, ’specially us boozehounds. | |
| 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. | |
| Short History of Drunkenness 18: We humans are champion booze-hounds. | |
| Widespread Panic 151: A booze-hound bachelor and a cloistered closet queen. He juiced at the Raincheck Room. |
(US) a liquor wholesaler.
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 7 July 11/4: [A] drummer for a Quaker City wholesale booze house. |
see booze crib
see bousing-ken n.
see booze-fighter n.
see booze crib
a licensed victualler.
| press cutting in 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. | |
| ‘Barroom Poetry’ at www.alprodgers.com 29 Dec. 🌐 Of course, nowadays every booze pusher wants us to drink responsibly. |
(N.Z.) a heavy drinker.
| Pound of Saffron 253: The way she talks [...] youd think I was a regular booze-rooster. | |
| 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. | |
| 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.
| 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.’. | |
| Und. and Prison Sl. | |
| Borneo Bulletin 19 Apr. 🌐 [headline] Police Look For Booze Runner Who Dodged Customs. |
a drinking party (usu. in a public house or bar).
| 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. | |
| et al. CUSS 87: Booze session A drinking party. | |
| 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. | |
| Musicians 273: A big booze session in his bungalow after with some of the musicians. | |
| Party Is Over 123: No weekend is a weekend without a booze session. | |
| 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.
| 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.
| Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era. |
(US) a barman.
| 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.
| Savage Night (1991) 105: A punchy booze-stupe without enough guts to string a uke. |
In phrases
see separate entry.
to be out on a spree.
| Bristol Magpie 7 Sept. 3/1: ‘Ee bin a doin’ a booze, ’ee hey’. |
(orig. US) to drink heavily.
| 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]. | |
| Morn. Call (San Francisco) 28 Dec. 8/1: Husband, have you been hitting the booze again? | |
| 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. | |
| Eve. World (NY) 28 Sept. 10/4: The booze fiend is confronted by object lesons [...] but he keeps on hitting the booze. | |
| Singer of the Kootenay 101: But anyhow, he seems discouraged [...] most fellows in his condition would hit the booze. | |
| Our Mr Wrenn (1936) 160: Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle fired me. | |
| Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 19 Nov. 9/2: Fathers too often give up. Get the blues, go to hitting the booze. | |
| Living Rough 128: He [...] started hitting the booze and playing around with the white dames. | |
| John Studebaker, an Amer. Dream 272: Then he began to hit the booze. Rum-dumb, they call it here. | |
| Plunder (2005) 285: You hit the booze by yourself and you’ll turn into an alcoholic. | |
| Guntz 189: You will start to hit the old booze quite a bit. | |
| Fat People 59: We decide to hit the booze. | |
| Indep. on Sun. Rev. 25 July 41: So you hit the booze. | |
| Flashover 56: He bellowed at her that she’d better not hit the booze again. | |
| Curse of Baird Hall 46: That old bugger must have hit the booze hard last night. |
(Aus.) a drunkard; alcohol (taken to excess).
| Sport (Adelaide) 25 Oct. 8/4: Harry gave a song ‘Mr Boose’ [...] at the blow out. | |
| Sport (Adelaide) 5 June 4/5: Leave Mr Booze alone and you will get your charm back. |
drinking heavily.
| ‘’Arry on Commercial Education’ in Punch 26 Sept. in (2006) 124: Jest because I [...] ’appened to go on the booze. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Aug. 10/1: Old Murphy, whose a cuter sort, / Is on the booze again. | |
| Liza of Lambeth (1966) 58: She was on the booze yesterday, an’ she ain’t got over it. | |
| 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. | |
| (con. 1914–18) ‘I wore a Tunic’ Songs and Sl. of the British Soldier 48: We fought and bled at Loos / While you were on the booze. | |
| Haxby’s Circus 137: You been on the booze or what? | |
| Murphy (1963) 46: Cooper [...] who has probably gone on the booze. | |
| Battlers 314: Dad never goes on the booze much. | |
| in These Are My People (1957) 143: I was on the booze for eight months once. | |
| ‘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. | |
| Apprentices (1970) I iv: bagley: What do you do after a day’s fishing? spow: Go on the booze. | |
| All Bull 121: I always drink some before I go on the booze [...] It lines your stomach. | |
| Lingo 133: Other terms include getting (or going) on the grog/booze. |
to treat one’s companions.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |