moonshine
noun
- high-proof distilled spirit, generally produced illicitly
verb
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L332255 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈmuːnʃaɪn/
noun
Etymology: From Middle English mone schyne, mone-schyne, moone shone; equivalent to moon + shine. Illegally distilled liquor is so named because its manufacture may be conducted without artificial light at night. The verb sense is a back-formation from moonshiner.
- The light of the moon.
“[…] her Waggon Spokes made of long Spinners legs: the Couer of the wings of Graſhoppers, her Traces of the ſmalleſt Spiders web, her coullers of the Moonſhines watry Beames […]”
“[…] the newes coming every moment of the growth of the fire; so as we were forced to begin to pack up our owne goods; and prepare for their removal; and did by moonshine (it being brave dry, and moonshine, and warm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden […]”
- The light of the moon.
- The light of the moon.
- High-proof alcohol (especially whiskey) that is often, but not always, produced illegally.
“They watered down the moonshine.”
““Wish I'd been more polite to that girl,” the sheriff remarked regretfully. […] I know she’d have give me another drink of that old moonshine she has.””
- Smuggled spirits, often with a specific sense; (Kent, Sussex) white brandy; (Yorkshire) gin.
- Nonsense.
“He was talking moonshine.”
““[…] But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills—Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?””
- A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
- A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
- A month.
“[…] wherefore ſhould I / Stand in the plague of cuſtome, and permit / The curioſity of Nations to depriue me? / For that I am ſome twelue, or fourteene Moonſhines / Lag of a brother?”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English mone schyne, mone-schyne, moone shone; equivalent to moon + shine. Illegally distilled liquor is so named because its manufacture may be conducted without artificial light at night. The verb sense is a back-formation from moonshiner.
- To make homemade (especially, illicit) alcohol, especially distilled spirits.
“His grandfather started to moonshine when things got really bad in 1933; when he got caught moonshining, he did a bit of time.”
“Tommy is seventy-seven years old. He started moonshining at the age of seven. He was working for an outfit by the age of eight. He worked for the outfit fulltime until he was sixteen. He moonshined off and on until his mid-twenties. He works at a sawmill now as well.”
- To make (an ingredient) into such a drink.
“A more practical critic notes that paleolithic man had a very sweet tooth, which he sated with honey. Worse, he moonshined the honey into metheglin, an alcoholic brew. Booze and junk food, in other words, are hardly modern inventions.”