Green’s Dictionary of Slang

drunkenness.

1818

W. Perry London Guide 136: An invitattion to walk into that sanctum sanctorum of all groggishness follows, where the women as well as the n take their drops of eye-water.

(Aus./N.Z.) a heavy drinker, a drunkard.

1948		Forbes Advocate (NSW) 16 Apr. 3/4: ‘My advice to you is to leave alcohol alone for a while and seek work.’ The grog artist scratched his head, and with a puzzled look asked the C.P.S. ‘Who’s Quirk?’.
1977		G. Lord God & All His Angels 138: I’m a lush, a piss-head, a good old-fashioned grog artist. I do in fact like screwing better than drinking, as it happens, but you really can't spend all day in bed screwing, can you? But you can spend most of the day drinking and most of the night.
1986		M. Gee Coll. Stories 14: A hard man, a grog-artist, a smooth line with the girls. He could live up to that for a while.
1990		H. Hodgman Blue Skies 93: Drinking nothing but flaming tea. Time was when things were different. Proper grog artist, I was. A regular flaming piss artist.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 48: Then there is grogging on, grog artist, on the grog and a grog up.
2010		B. Condon Daredevils 95: We do the camping-out thing and he tells me his secrets – how he used to be a grog artist before he met Mum – the whole life story.

see under blossom n.²

a drunkard.

1805		Eve. Fireside I 223/1: Let the strongest grog bruiser come and try a fall at wrestling with me, a temperate water temperate drinker.
1823		N.-Y. Eve. Post 11 Feb. 2/1: [headline] A stout grog bruiser.
1828		J. Adlum Cultivation of Vine in Amer. 45: I can dismiss the brandy to the grog bruiser and retain the pure wine for the wise, the witty, &c.
1849		P. Dow Dealings of God, Man, & the Devil 171: As he had been a grog-bruiser, and a debtor for spirits at tipling houses, many had despaired of ever getting their money.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Jan. 17/1: Grog-blossoms were gathered before ’twas [i.e. alcohol] all gone.
1860		Methodist Qly Rev. Oct. in Crane Stephen Crane’s Literary Family 91: What if a gambler, a swindler, or a grogbruiser be found sitting among lawmakers? Do not gamblers, swindlers, and grogbruisers dwell in this goodly land?
1871		A. Calkins Opium & Opium-Appetite 280: The veteran grog-bruiser subsiding and rising again with the oscillating wave may perchance in a desperate spring [...] ride the o’ertopping crest as to plant firm foot on the solid marge beyond.

see grog shop

(orig. milit.) a drinking party.

		1863E.W. Jacob (ed.) Something New 17: it is usual to call such opportunities supper parties at the University, but ‘grog-fight’ is the more intelligible and legitimate expression current in the army.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1876		R.M. Jephson Girl He Left Behind Him 9: Young Hardup’s long-suffering parent had just delivered him out of the hands of the Jews, and he had been having a ‘grog-fight’ in his room to celebrate the event.
1878		S.J. MacKenna Brave Men in Action 282: Each man running to his station as merrily and as fast as he would to a grog-fight.

(US) a drunkard.

1952		Neurotica 1-9 n.p.: hey doc i said how about it one more round shout if you must at this old groghead two more beers.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 37: The grogheads, whore-mongers and crap shooters.

(US) a public house.

1848		Knickerbocker (N.Y.) XVIII 521: He was busy about the village, penetrating every grog-hole and gambling-alley [DA].
1859		Wisconsin Farmer June 195/2: As usual, a number of idle fellows gather into a village groghole to spend the passing hour.

(US) a rough or illicit drinking place, also attrib.

1857		Brooklyn Eve. Star (NY) 15 Oct. 2/5: Night-Watchmen [can] admire the caricature of a ‘Know-Nothing’ candidate in front of a grog mill opposite.
1869		Philadelphia Inquirer (PA) 29 Nov. 3/5: Three boys [...] found in a low grog mill [were] insensible from the efects of whisky.
1875		Times (Philadelphia, PA) 6 May 4/1: He steadied himself against the corner of a friendly grog mill.
1885		Hawaiian Gaz. (Honolulu, HI) 15 July 3/1: Our new grog mill don’t seem to be a very paying concern.
1897		Nebraska State Jrnl 17 Oct. 12/5: Does she vainly imagine that it will convert the drunkard or close one grog mill?
1907		Eve. Chron. (Charlotte, NC) 25 July 4/3: Any town is beter off with open saloons [...] and strict police regulations than with a [...] grog mill.
1919		L.A. Times 2 Feb. 26/3: The grog-mill was the hub of San Francisco’s life.
1921		Amer. Jrnl Clinical Medicine 28 724: I saw he wouldn’t last long hanging around old Felby’s grog mill.
1936		Pittsburg Courier (PA) 19 Sept. 11: T’other day I met up with Gutfoot over at Kid Screwtop’s grog mill.
1949		‘J. Evans’ Halo in Brass 33: No grog-mill cuties with peekaboo blouses [HDAS].
1954		Pocono Record (Stroudsburg, PA) 1 Dec. 7/2: Habitues of Harry Hill’s gin and grog mill.
1962		(con. mid-18C) D.H. Corkran Cherokee Frontier 40: A few drams at a backwoods grog mill.
2002		E.P. Kindwall Unexpected Odyssey 172: [A] man I’d met the night before at the White Horse (local grog mill).

(US/Aus./N.Z.) a public house; also attrib.

1837		in Gent.’s Mag. 30: A ragged dirty looking Indian, who was standing at a grog shanty door.
1855		Melbourne Punch 2 Aug. 181/2: The only roof under which he is known to seat himself is that of a public house in town, or a wayside grog shanty in the bush, where he wrangles with brother bullock drivers as to the merits of tlieir respective teams.
1860		Star (Ballarat, Vic.) 2 Feb. 2/4: The defendant asked Mary Burgess if she had not before been employed in a ‘grog shanty’ [...] The Police Magistrate desired Mr Burke [...] to use the English language in preference to slang terms.
1869		Auckland Punch 163/1: I [...] reached the grog-shanty in safety .
1872		Melbourne Punch 12 Dec. 191/1: We were all down drinking at Mother Holden’s grog shanty, at Bull Town. There was ‘Jack the Splitter,’ ‘Harry my Friend,’ ‘Good-day Dick,’ ‘Wrong to Blazes Bob,’ ‘Joe the Victim,’ ‘German Harry,’ ‘Three Spree Jim’ [etc.].
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Apr. 10/3: He was the proprietor in fee-simple of a lordly grog shanty in Wairarapa, N.Z., and was doing ‘devilish’ well, as times go, earning an honest crust, and putting up a little pile against a sou’-wester or a rainy season.
1885		J.S. Borlase Blue Cap, the Bushranger 96/2: A short distance from where we were camped there was a grog shanty.
1887		‘Aus. Colloquialisms’ in All Year Round 30 July 67/1: Log huts are commonly called ‘shanties,’ and a curse of the bush districts [...] is the ‘grog-shanty,’ an institution only too common.
1894		G. Boothby On the Wallaby 259: It was described to us as ‘a place of dead dogs, broken-down grog shanties, and one drunkard’.
1908		Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Sept. 1/1: The capers therein [i.e. a lodging house] would disgrace a mulga grog-shanty.
1919		K. Harris Outback in Aus. 109: He ‘stocked’ himself at the wayside grog-shanty, and took a couple of bottles with him.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 341: She got a grog-shanty up the depot now.
1998		(ref. 1840–50) P. Sumerling Down at the Local 95: Three different publicans owned the property between 1840 and 1850 and there is reference by local historian, Jim Warburton, to a grog shanty in Kensington ...

1. (also grog store) a public house, a bar, often unlicensed.

1793		J.B. Moreton West India Customs and Manners 35: There are some good taverns, [...] also an incredible number of petty ones, called grog shops, occupied by people of the vilest characters.
1800		Mass. Mercury 2 May n.p.: Are they not busy, day and night, at the corners of the streets, at grog shops, and other places of resort?
1812		Boston Gazette 7 Dec. n.p.: Till they should be landed safely in a grog-shop or tavern.
1829		Mass. Spy 8 Apr. n.p.: Talking loudly in taverns and grog-shops.
1834		Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 58: About half-a-dozen men, whom they had picked up in the different alehouses or grog-shops, as the sailors call them.
1834		Ely’s Hawk & Buzzard (NY) 15 Mar. 1/3: Inform him that he had better stay out of the grog shops.
1847		[A. Harris] (con. 1820s) Settlers & Convicts 12: At this time there were nearly twice as many unlicensed grog-shops as licensed public-house in the town of Sydney.
1849		G.G. Foster N.Y. in Slices 44: The worst feature in the character of the B’hoy is his dissipation– his worst enemy the grog-shop, the three-cent cellar, or the liquor-grocery on the corner.
1852		G.C. Mundy Our Antipodes III 76: The undersized native-born denizens of the Sydney streets and grog-shops.
c.1858		J.H. Green Reformed Gambler 141: The two monied gamblers leased and fitted up an old saw-mill, one portion of it a as grog shop, and another as a card room.
1861		R.F. Burton City of the Saints 171: The station boasts [...] a post-office, a store, and of course a grog-shop.
1871		Galaxy (N.Y.) Feb. 827: The licensed grog-shops over 7,000 in number, and the gambling establishments, including 92 faro banks and all the places where lottery tickets are sold, less than 600.
1883		R.L. Stevenson Treasure Island 2: This is [...] a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?
1898		(con. 1875) F.T. Bullen Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ 314: I was grieved to see almost the whole crowd [...] emerge from the grog-shop plentifully supplied with bottles.
1898		H. Macfall Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer 119: The man who kept the common lodging-house and grog-shop at Kingston.
1909		F.H. Tillotson How I Became a Detective 89: ‘Grog store’ a saloon.
1914		‘Bartimeus’ ‘Concerning the Sailor-Man’ in Naval Occasions 210: Was it a meeting with a Yankee tar in some foreign grog-shop that tempted him with tales of a higher pay and greater independence?
1920		Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang Oct. 5: Drier than an Algerian caravan in the Sahara desert, 20 miles from the oasis grog shop.
1927		H. Asbury Gangs of N.Y. 69: But Lowrie himself was caught in a dock robbery soon after he started his grog-shop.
1932		C. McKay Gingertown 223: The grogshop-keeper demonstrated his appreciation of Sue by setting up a round of drinks for all the people in the shop.
1933		(con. 1900s) C. McKay Banana Bottom 107: The grog shop filled with deep belly-shaking laughter.
1945		R.L. Bellem ‘Dead Don’t Dream’ in Hollywood Detective July 🌐 When you’re hunting a drunk, you haunt the grog shops where he’s likely to be.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 298: Danny was squandering his time and his money in the grog shops and the horse room.
1960		‘Nino Culotta’ Cop This Lot 95: Wot time do the grog shops shut?
1967		S. Hugill Sailortown 6: A few wooden shacks, mostly grog-shops and dives.
1975		A. Summers Damned Whores and God’s Police 356: [S]mall wonder that the out-patients department was regarded as a free grog shop.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 126: He shook down the pimps and the prostitutes, grogshop owners, and aristocrats.

2. the mouth.

c.1840

Thackeray Mr and Mrs. Frank Berry (1887) 97: Claret drawn in profusion from the gown-boy’s grog-shop. (He went down, and split his front teeth).

see under dry adj.¹

see it’s the beer talking under talk v.

to get drunk.

1945		Sun (Sydney) 12 Aug. 8/3: Every time Mr. Smith hit the grog, he hit her and she hit the ground.
1986		T. Winton That Eye, The Sky 70: I think he’s hit the grog a bit.

(Aus.) very drunk.

1889		Freeman’s Jrnl (Sydney) 16 Feb. 15/1: [B]ut the fact of the Echo being the only paper here that quoted the awful lines seems to prove that ‘Granny’ must either be on the grog again, or else her loyal editor has gone to Bourke for change of air and left ‘Tim Fogarty’ in charge of his bantling.
1930		Narromine News and Trangie Advocate (NSW) 21 Nov. 5/1: I was right off me tucker, an’ well on the grog.
1946		K. Tennant Lost Haven 66: He had been pleased to see her, ‘the cows bellering their heads off, as if they’d been on the grog and got a headache themselves.’.
1959		D. Hewett Bobbin Up (1961) 62: Fat lot of chaperoning Mumma could do after a night on the grog.
1960		A. Seymour One Day of the Year I i: It’s because I’m a bloody Australian that I’m getting on the grog.
1968		A. Buzo Norm and Ahmed (1973) 25: Just a place to go when you wanted to get on the grog.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 3: In the past the victim’s husband would have usually just beaten her up and stolen her housekeeping money to get on the grog and go to the races.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 48: Then there is grogging on, grog artist, on the grog and a grog up.