Curiosities of Medical ExperienceMillingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Philosophy
Curiosities of Medical Experience
Millingen, J. G. (John Gideon)
Medicine
That hard drinking was introduced from Flanders and Holland, and other
northern countries, seems probable from the derivation of many of the
expressions used in carousing. The phrase of being "half-seas over," as
applied to a state of drunkenness, originated from _op zee_, which in
Dutch meant _over sea_; and Gifford informs us that it was a name given
to a stupifying beer introduced in England from the Low Countries, and
called _op zea_; thus Jonson in the Alchemist:
I do not like the dulness of your eye;
It hath a heavy cast, 'tis _up see Dutch_.
An inebriating draught was also called an _up see freeze_, from the strong
_Friesland_ beer. The word "carouse," according to Gifford and Blount, is
derived from the name of a large glass, called by the Danes _ruuse_, or
from the German words _gar_, _all_, and _ausz out_: hence drink _all out_.
Nash, in the work above quoted, says, "Now he is nobody that cannot drink
_super nagulum_, carouse the hunters' _hoope_, quaff _upsee freze crosse_,
with healths, gloves, mumpes, frolickes, and a thousand such domineering
inventions." The origin of these slang terms is not quite evident.
Drinking _super nagulum_, or on the nail, was a northern custom which
consisted in only leaving one drop in the cup, which was poured upon the
thumb-nail, to prove that justice had been done to the potation or toast;
and that, to use the language of modern drinkers, the glass was _cleared_.
This custom is alluded to by Bishop Hall in his "Mundus alter et idem," in
which the Duke of Tenderbelly exclaims, "'Let never this goodly-formed
goblet of wine go jovially through me:' and then he set it to his mouth,
stole it off every drop, save a little remainder, which he was by custom
to set upon his thumb's nail and lick it off." In Fletcher we find the
phrase
I am thine _ad unguem_;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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