Let's say you are generating the footnotes for an annotated edition of
Nicholas Nickleby. In Chapter 27, Mr Pyke asks for a 'half-and-half'. How does Michael Slater (Penguin, 1978) gloss this?
A mixture of two malt liquors, especially ale and porter.
Fair enough. So how does David Parker (Everyman 1994) gloss it?
A mixture of two malt liquors, especially ale and porter.
That feels ... familiar, somehow. What will you do?
“half-and-half” One of a variety of possible mixtures of alcoholic drinks; either mild ale and bitter, or Scotch ale and India Pale Ale (especially in the north), or (in Ireland) ale and Guinness.
Of course, that took you almost a minute of research online, in the 19th-century sources on Google Books. Almost a full minute!
3 comments:
At least in Scotland 'a half and a half' is a whisky and a half-pint of heavy. See, for instance, uses in Iain Banks's Espedair Street.
At least in Scotland 'a half and a half' is a whisky and a half-pint of heavy. See, for instance, uses in Iain Banks's Espedair Street.
True: but that's a usage that post-dates the nineteenth-century, so far as I can see.
There's also a reference (in Nicholas Nickleby, I mean) to 'Double Diamond'; which I remember as a pale ale; but which in the 19th-cent. was a brand of port wine.
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