This may also have to do with regionalism.  In Pennsylvania, for
instance, one goes to the "state store" to buy liquor.  Many people there
might simply not know what a package store is.  It is possible that
Lieberman was changing his vocabulary to fit (what he took to be) local
usage.






>        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 After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, state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.


Scott C. Martin
Associate Professor
History Dept.
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH   43403
419/372-2030
419/372-7208 fax
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