I came across the word meat-drink-washing-and-lodging today; it's an old slang word for gin. The word suggests that gin provides everything you could possibly want!
Gin became popular in England after William of Orange ascended the throne in 1689. It was originally a Dutch drink. Another name for gin is geneva, not anything to do with the Swiss town, but a contraction and anglicisation of the French genévrier, meaning juniper, the berry that is used to flavour gin. Gin was cheap and therefore popular with the poor. Hogarth's picture Gin Lane shows the sorry state the widespread availability of cheap gin brought about.
The nicknames for gin - and there are lots of them - speak volumes too. Here's a selection of synonyms for gin which have been in use over the past three hundred years: bunter's tea, south sea, cock-my-cap, wind, kill-grief, comfort, white tape, white satin, white wool, white ribbon, bit of tape, blue tape, blue ribbon, light blue, sky blue, poverty, apricock-water, diddle, kill-cobbler, stark-naked, strip-me-naked, mother's ruin, roll-me-in-the-kennel and the Cockney rhyming slang needle and pin, nose and chin and Vera Lynn.
evrythng s perfectly given..wid d nick names..thnk u..
hogarth u rock..u did evrythng fr poor people..u made gin a cheapest 1..congo..
Posted by: Nayan | May 23, 2011 at 02:34 PM