Forty-rod
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 cheap, strong whiskey or similar alcoholic beverage uncountable
"[…]he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time"
- 1 very strong, containing a high concentration of alcohol not-comparable, usually
"As a result of their laws in some of the states statistics furnish the facts that more “rot gut” whiskey is used than ever before, the milder and more harmless beverages having been in a measure embargoed by the law by reason of the fact that they cannot so easily be smuggled and handled as the concentrated “forty rod” whiskey."
Example
More examples"[…]he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time"
Etymology
From forty + rod, a measure of distance, suggesting whiskey so strong it can affect one from 200 meters away.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.