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 After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, state 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 [log in to unmask]