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Early 17th century, from cock(“male bird”) + tail, in the sense “(a horse with its) tail standing up, like a cock’s”. The origin of the extension to “an alcoholic mixed drink” is unknown. One theory is that it refers to a simulant (gingering), hence a simulating drink; compare pick-me-up.[1] Another attested use is for non-thoroughbred racehorses: these were considered "cock-tailed" due to their docked tails. This may have led to the term "cocktail" (sense 1) being used for an adulterated spirit.[2]
They visited a bar noted for its wide range of cocktails.
1806 May 6, “Rum! Rum! Rum!”, in Balance and Columbian Repository, volume v, number 18, New York: Hudson, page 142:
[...] a certain candidate has placed in his account of Loss and Gain, the following items:-- LOSS [...] 411 glasses bitters[,] 25 do.cock-tail
1806 May 13, “Communication”, in Balance and Columbian Repository, volume v, number 19, New York: Hudson, page 146:
Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters — it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head.
1904, Charlotte Bryson Taylor, “Chapter VI”, in In the Dwellings of the Wilderness:
Deane opened the fray by declaring, à propos of dinners, that the only proper way to create a cocktail of the genus Martini was to add a half-spoonful of sherry after the other ingredients had been satisfactorily mixed, if at all.
He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon.
2011, Mark Polonsky et al., USSR: From an Original Idea by Karl Marx, page 32:
The cocktail in Britain is a rigidly-defined social institution: each has its own particular meaning—the G & T is the alcoholic equivalent of the interview suit; Pernod and black is an alternative to glue sniffing for repentant trendies, etc.
(by extension) A mixture of other substances or things.
Scientists found a cocktail of pollutants in the river downstream from the chemical factory.
a cocktail of illegal drugs
2013, Andrew Farmer, Managing Environmental Pollution, Routledge, →ISBN, page 22:
Motor vehicles, for example, emit a cocktail of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulates, heavy metals and (for diesel) sulphur dioxide.
2019, Eliza Hartrich, “Edward IV, the Earl of Warwick, and a Changing Urban Sector, 1461–71”, in Politics and the Urban Sector in Fifteenth-Century England, 1413–1471, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 181:
This chapter examines how the concurrent phenomena of an assertive monarch, persistent civil war, and economic change affected the political activities of townspeople in three ways: in the relationship between the ‘urban sector’ and the English polity, in the complexion of municipal internal politics, and in the nature of urban participation in the civil wars of 1469–71. In all three of these fields, the particular cocktail of circumstances present in the 1460s encouraged a wide variety of townspeople to become invested emotionally and materially in the course of national politics, as they had not been during much of the 1450s.
2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, page 38:
Terry Gourvish, the lead author if the authorised commercial history of BR, described the new BTC structure thus: "The conclusion must be that the combination of a few undynamic railwaymen, underpaid full-timers (Commission and General Staff) and poorly-paid part-time businessmen was not a very potent managerial cocktail."
A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in its veins.
1868, Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, volume ii, John Murray, page 11:
A “cock-tail” is a horse not purely bred, but with only one-eighth or one-sixteenth impure blood in his veins
It looks very cocktail to be seen riding through the streets of London in a scarlet coat ;
1840, The Sporting magazine:
The Prince had nothing particular about him but a monstrous smart whip with a gold stag for a handle, which was pronounced a very cocktail looking instrument by the Leicestershire farmers, with whom His Serene Highness is no favorite
2008, Christine Kelly, Mrs Duberly's War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6, →ISBN:
She always goes about with a brace of loaded revolvers in her belt!! Very cocktail and no occasion for it
1875, Charles Thomas Samuel Birch Reynardson, 'Down the Road': Or, Reminiscences of a Gentleman Coachman:
Nothing looks so cocktail and muffish on a coach as to see a man learning to catch his whip, and after many futile efforts taking it upside down for this purpose, and twisting the thong round and round with the point downwards, as if he was stirring porridge for a pack of hounds.
Verb
cocktail (third-person singular simple presentcocktails, present participlecocktailing, simple past and past participlecocktailed)
“cocktail”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-02
1977 December 17, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 24, page 14:
J’espere que vous accepteriez cette invitation extraordinaire au voyage! Si vous voulez un rapport de qualite avec un homme mur et debonnair. Je propose, au debut, des cocktails dans une ambiance elegante pour une recontre joyeuse.
