grog

English

Etymology

An allusion to Admiral Edward Vernon (nicknamed “Old Grog” after the grogram coat he habitually wore), who in 1740 ordered his sailors' rum to be watered down.

This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɡɹɒɡ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɡɹɑɡ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒɡ

Noun

grog (countable and uncountable, plural grogs)

1. An alcoholic beverage made with rum and water, especially that once issued to sailors of the Royal Navy.
   • 1796, John Stedman, chapter 11, in Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition‎, volume 1, London: J. Johnson, page 264:

     […] giving him a calebash, and the best part of a bottle of my rum, I desired him to run to the creek, and make me some grog, and this he did; but the poor fellow, never having made grog before, poured in all the spirits and but very little water, doubtless thinking, that the stronger it was the better; which beverage I swallowed to the bottom, without taking time to taste it, and I became instantly so much intoxicated that I could hardly keep my feet.

   1. An alcoholic beverage made with hot water or tea, sugar and rum, sometimes also with lemon or lime juice and spices, particularly cinnamon.
2. (by extension, Australia, New Zealand) Any alcoholic beverage.
   • 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, published 1993, page 142:

     I quite understood their drift, and after a stiff glass of grog, or rather more of the same, and with each a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of meeting so 'bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent.

3. (countable, Australia, New Zealand) A glass or serving of an alcoholic beverage.
   • 1950, Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice , New York: William Morrow, Chapter 5, p. 138,

     Joe told them how he had been nailed up to be beaten, and they shouted another grog for him.

4. (ceramics) A type of pre-fired clay that has been ground and screened to a specific particle size.

   Synonyms: chamotte, firesand

Usage notes

• The sailors' drink was sometimes referred to as "one-water grog", "two-water grog", etc. indicating the number of parts of water mixed with the rum.

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

Verb

grog (third-person singular simple present grogs, present participle grogging, simple past and past participle grogged)

1. (transitive, ceramics) To grind and screen (clay) to a specific particle size.
2. (intransitive, slang) To drink alcohol.
   • 2009, Kalissa Alexeyeff, Dancing from the Heart:

     […] a practice of “equal surrender.” This evocative phrase comes from Basil Sansom's ethnography […] of grogging sessions among Aboriginal communities in Darwin. Sansom argues that this style of communal drinking […]

Derived terms

• ungrogged

References

Further reading

• grog on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• gorg

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English grog.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡʁɔɡ/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

grog m (plural grogs)

1. grog (drink made from rum)

Descendants

• → Romanian: grog

Further reading

• “grog”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French grog.

Noun

grog n (plural groguri)

1. grog

Declension

Welsh

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡroːɡ/

Adjective

grog

1. Soft mutation of crog.

Mutation