The words we use to describe the experience of drinking are often part of a hyper-localized vocabulary—a calling card for ex-pats in a foreign place. Regan Hofmann on how we understand and relate through drinking terms.

llustration: James Carpenter

The first time I asked someone in New York to pick me up “a mickey of gin,” all I got was a puzzled stare. The 375 milliliter flask-shaped bottle, which is used to hold the sort of cheap booze one might slip into a jacket pocket and nurse inconspicuously, is as ubiquitous in liquor stores here as in my hometown of Vancouver, BC, so I knew the format wasn’t the problem. Turns out, nobody calls it a mickey in New York.

As an ex-pat Canadian, these sorts of cultural crossed wires happen constantly. But when it comes to talking about booze, nearly everyone has his or her own story of regional idiom gone wild. Michael Russell, restaurant critic for The Oregonian, recalls exhorting friends in Berkeley, California to drink up with “To the neck!” a rallying cry for the young and inebriated. In Boston, friends describe the (highly illegal, not-at-all-recommended) road soda, the beer that comes with you in the car—meaning, quite literally, one for the road. “In the South, they’re much more metaphorical,” says Paul Dickson, Guinness record holder for the most synonyms of a single word (nearly 3,000; for “drunk”), which are published in his book Intoxerated: The Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary. And so you get terms like moonshine, a downright beautiful name for what can be a truly frightful drink…

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