Pubs, bars and boozers

There are lots of pubs and bars around these days, and a few different names for them, but there used to be many more drinking establishments in most towns a few hundred years ago, and there were many more synonyms of pub or bar, too.

 

Not that they are necessarily exact synonyms. Inn and tavern are often used interchangeably but, strictly speaking, an inn offered lodging, whilst a tavern did not. An alehouse sold only ale and a punch-house was an inn or tavern where punch was served. Other old words for what we now call a pub are: mug-house, cupping-house, victualling house, pot house, pot shop, peg-house, tippling-house, red lattice (from where the pub chain's name Slug and Lettuce comes from - see this old post of mine), diversory (or deversary) and change-house (a Scottish word). A lust-house was a tavern with a beer garden (from the Dutch and German Lust meaning pleasure). A night-house was a tavern that stayed open all night, as did a night-cellar, which was usually a more disreputable establishment. A shoful was a lower-class tavern, and the prefix hedge-, as hedge-inn, hedge-tavern or hedge-alehouse was used contemptuously to mean 'third-rate'.

 

Those doing the job of an innkeeper or taverner in these various establishments were, at various times, called victuallers, nick-pots, gannekers and, rather more flamboyantly, brother of the spigot, man of the spigot, son of the spigot or knight of the spigot (a hero of the spigot was the one who indulged!).

Comments

[john]

Is "boozer" used universally across Britain? I've personally only heard it from Scousers, but wonder how universal it is.

As usual, great post Susan. Thanks

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for your kind words, John. Yes, everyone would know the word 'boozer' (also means a person who drinks a lot as well as the pub). I've just put 'boozer' in the Google news page and, although there aren't many hits (because it's slang and more often said than written) it appears in an article in a Welsh newspaper and in one from Hackney (a London district).

[Jemmy Hope]

Alehouse, peeve-ken, slaver shop; slaver rhymes with cadaver, not with saver. Also rhyming slang, rub-a-dub.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Jemmy. Those are new ones for me!