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
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> 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.
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