Barrelhouse Word: in one’s whiskey

Cover for calt: Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary. Click for larger imagein one’s whiskey

When I’m in my whiskey, I don’t care what I say
‘Cause me and my whiskey, we going to have our way.
—Barbecue Bob, “Me And My Whiskey,” 1929

Intoxicated; perhaps suggested by the genteel equivalent, in one’s cups. The above is one of the few instances of blues-era black slang for drunkenness.

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.


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