Gin is an alcoholic drink distilled from malt or from unmalted barley or other grain, and afterwards rectified and flavoured. The word is French, genièvre, juniper, corrupted into Geneva, and subsequently into its present form. It is to the berries of the juniper that the best Hollands owes its flavour.
Perhaps one of the earliest allusions to gin is in Massinger’s Duke of Milan (1623), Act I., scene i., when Graccho, a creature of Mariana, says to the courtier Julio, of a chance drunkard,
“Bid him sleep;
’Tis a sign he has ta’en his liquor, and if you meet
An officer preaching of sobriety,
Unless he read it in Geneva print,
Lay him by the heels.”
In this extract the word is played upon, Geneva suggesting both the habit of spirit-drinking and Calvinistic doctrine.
When Pope wrote, the corrupted word “Gin” had become common. In the Epilogue to the Satires, I. 130.