"He had seen many a braw callant, far less than Guse Gibbie, fight brawly under Montrose."
(Old Mortality, Ch. 1.)
and our own expression "a rum customer," reduced in America to "a rum cuss." Hock, for Hochheimer, wine from Hochheim, occurs as early as Beaumont and Fletcher; and rum, spirit, is for earlier rumbullion, of obscure origin. Gin is for geneva, a corruption of Fr. genièvre, Lat. juniperus, with the berries of which it is flavoured. The history of grog is more complicated. The stuff called grogram, earlier grograyne, is from Fr. gros grain, coarse grain. Admiral Vernon (18th century) was called by the sailors "Old Grog" from his habit of wearing grogram breeches. When he issued orders that the regular allowance of rum was henceforth to be diluted with water, the sailors promptly baptized the mixture with his nickname.
CLIPPED FORMS
Sometimes the two first syllables survive. We have navvy for navigator, brandy for brandywine, from Du. brandewyn, lit. burnt wine, and whisky for usquebaugh, Gaelic uisge-beatha, water of life (cf. eau-de-vie), so that the literal meaning of whisky is very innocent. It has a doublet in the river-name Usk. Before the 18th century usquebaugh is the regular form. In the following passage the Irish variety is referred to—
"The prime is usquebaugh, which cannot be made anywhere in that perfection; and whereas we drink it here in aqua vitæ measures, it goes down there by beer-glassfuls, being more natural to the nation."
(Howell, 1634.)
Canter is for Canterbury gallop, the pace of pilgrims riding to the shrine of St Thomas. John Dennis, known as Dennis the Critic, says of Pope—
"Boileau's Pegasus has all his paces. The Pegasus of Pope, like a Kentish post-horse, is always on the Canterbury."
(On the Preliminaries to the Dunciad.)