The development of such language in the business world makes for fascinating
history.  Off-licenses have a long history in Ireland and have been known by
many different names.  Is anyone well-acquainted with the history of the
label off-license in Britain and Ireland?  In my study of Irish pubs before
the First World War, I have yet to see it.  The most common phrase in
Ireland at the end of the century was simply licensed grocer.

Brad Kadel
Department of History
Luther College

----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Room <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 4:53 PM
Subject: "package store" vs. "liquor store"


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
header -----------------------
> Sender:       Alcohol and Temperance History Group
<[log in to unmask]>
> Poster:       Robin Room <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:      "package store" vs. "liquor store"
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
>
>         Part of William Safire's column on words in the New York Times, 1
> Oct. 2000:
>
>         Package Deal
>               In the Left Coast [Los Angeles] convention speech
introducing
> himself to the
>           nation, Senator Joseph Lieberman said: "My dad lived in an
> orphanage
>           when he was a child. He went to work in a bakery truck and then
> owned
>           a package store in Stamford, Conn."
>               The week before, however, in a speech to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
>           convention in Hartford, Lieberman used the phrase "liquor
store".
>           Crawford Lincoln of Brimfield, Mass., asks, "Was this a gentler
>           locution to soften the image of his family's business for a
> national
>           audience?"
>               I'd say yes, and thereby hangs a euphemism. A "package
store"
>           is a store, not a bar, where liquor is sold by the bottle and
not
>           by the drink and where the contents of the "package" is consumed
> off
>           premises.
>               In 1880, Bradstreet's weekly reported active trade in
"package
>           houses". In 1890, The London Daily News reported that "Judge
> Foster
>           recently decided that liquor could only be sold in 'original
>           packages,' which is construed as meaning one or more bottles of
> beer
>           or whisky. The merchants . . . are not allowed to sell beer or
> whisky
>           by the glass."
>               Our earliest evidence for the phrase "package store", I am
>           informed by Joanne Despres at Merriam-Webster, "is an entry in
the
>           1918 Addenda to the New International Dictionary (originally
> published
>           in 1909), where it is labeled 'cant, U.S."' (Cant means
>           "jargon," and business euphemisms fall into that category.)
>               Let's face it: what the seller is selling is not a package
but
> what
>           is contained in the package, which is liquor. Why the
> squeamishness
>           about that word? After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, state
>           legislatures had the opportunity to license booze shops and
> saloons
>           but did not want to upset the many "drys." That led to the
> linguistic
>           prettification of saloons as "taverns" and of shops purveying
the
>           mother's milk of John Barleycorn as "package stores".
>               Maybe the senator uses the terms interchangeably. But I have
a
>           hunch that some politically sensitive soul remembered that
"drys"
>           still exist and vote and changed the candidate for vice
> president's
>           word from "liquor" to "package".  It shows a
>           sandpapered-fingertip sensitivity to the shades of meaning of
> words.