Green’s Dictionary of Slang

square rigger n.1

(N.Z.)

1. a square gin bottle, often used to hold beer.

1909
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2003
[NZ]Truth (Wellington) 3 July 5: Square-riggers of beer and small flasks of brandy were the favorite [p]otions the ladies lovingly lapped [DNZE].
[NZ]Truth (Wellington) 4 June 7: It is not quite certain, at least in the police court, what one should call the bottles [...] A good old-fashioned name is a ‘square-face,’ but in the court the other day ‘square rigger’ was the term used [...] while Counsel went so far as to call it a ‘square-rigged bottle.’ [DNZE].
F. Cloke Songs of N.Z. 130: Rise, ye bushmen and gumdiggers, / [...] Where you’ve sunk with your square-riggers, / With your brain on fire with booze!
NZEF Times 4 Aug. 4: What we really need is a few more square riggers [DNZE].
[NZ]P.A. Lawlor More Wellington Days 21: A ‘square rigger’ (a full-sized empty gin bottle) would be filled for 8d.
C. Hunt Speaking a Silence 126: Old Gus eventually trotted out with his square rigger to take on his way. (Those riggers were the old, square gin bottles, too. They held easy a quart of grog.) [DNZE].
[NZ]McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 106/2: squarerigger half-gallon jar of beer, named after gin bottles recycled for beer pre-WWII.
[NZ]McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

2. a half-gallon (3 litre) flagon of beer; thus the beer itself.

1908
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2003
[NZ]N.Z. Truth 8 Feb. 6/3: The excuse given by Taylor [...] was that he was full of square rigger and that his brain was paralysed.
[NZ]N.Z. Truth 22 jan. 7/1: When [Constable[ Roach entered he found a ‘square rigger’ of beer.
[Aus]Camperdown Chron. (Vic.) 6 Sept. 1/6: I suggest that the accused uses the hand-bag to carry two square riggers of beer.
[NZ]N.Z. Truth 15 Apr. 6/3: The indefatigable officer discovered a ‘square rigger’ of draught beer under the mattress.
[NZ]McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 106/2: squarerigger half-gallon jar of beer, named after gin bottles recycled for beer pre-WW2; Squarerigger Gully a working class inner suburb of Wellington so called because of men coming home from the pub up Aro Street with their squareriggers of beer.
[NZ]McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].