hooch
/huːt͡ʃ/ noun
Forms hooches hootch
- noun (Canada, US, informal) An alcoholic beverage, especially an inferior or illicit one and especially liquor such as whisky.
- noun (Vietnam War-era military slang) A thatched hut, CHU, or any simple dwelling.
Synonyms
Etymology
Abbreviation of hoochinoo, name of a specific liquor, from Tlingit Xutsnoowú Ḵwáan, the group that produced it, from Hutsnuwu (“grizzly bear fort”), the name of the village on Admiralty Island in which they lived. From Tlingit xóots (“grizzly bear”).
First attested in the 1950s, probably borrowed from Japanese 家(うち) (uchi, “house”), especially the dialectal form with an initial h- used on the Ryukyu islands where many American soldiers were based.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “hooch”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details