cocktail

English Lessons

cocktail

Slang Feb 07 2008

Quote

“Hopefully we can bring…one giant evil cocktail that is one thousand proof.”

- Shock rocker Marilyn Manson on reuniting with an old bandmate…and Satan. (Rolling Stone)

Meaning

a mixture of things, particularly alcohol

Use

Anyone who has been to a bar knows what a cocktail is. It’s a mixed drink like a whiskey sour, or rum and Coke. But cocktail has a lot of other uses too.

For instance, people who have to take a combinations of a lot of medicines for a serious illness like HIV refer to their medicine as a cocktail. You’ve probably heard of a Molotov cocktail, which is a bomb that’s easy to make in bottle.

Really, any mixture of things can be called a cocktail. Marilyn Manson recently reunited with Twiggy Ramirez, a bass player he used to write a lot of songs with but stopped playing with in 2000. He said that the combination ought to make for a potent cocktail. Since the strength of alcohol is measured in proof, Manson jokes that his band will be “one thousand proof” which would be an impossibly strong cocktail.

Examples

“With a mixture of Turks, Ukrainians and one American, the wedding was something of a cultural cocktail.”

“The healer mixed the smelly ingredients into a peculiar cocktail.”