moonshine
/ˈmuːnʃaɪn/ noun, verb
Forms moonshines moonshining moonshined moon-shine
- noun (literally) The light of the moon.
- noun The light reflected off Earth's Moon.
- noun The light reflected off a moon.
- noun (informal) High-proof alcohol (especially whiskey) that is often, but not always, produced illegally. “They watered down the moonshine.”
- noun (UK, dialectal, archaic) Smuggled spirits, often with a specific sense; (Kent, Sussex) white brandy; (Yorkshire) gin.
- noun (uncountable, informal) Nonsense. “He was talking moonshine.”
- noun (mathematics, uncountable) A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
- noun (US, cooking) A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
- verb (intransitive) To make homemade (especially, illicit) alcohol, especially distilled spirits. “His grandfather started to moonshine when things got really bad in 1933; when he got caught moonshining, he did a bit of time.”
- verb (transitive) To make (an ingredient) into such a drink.
Synonyms
moonlight moon-light moon light moonbeam moon-beam moon beam bathtub gin bootleg coon dick corn liquor hooch mountain dew white lightning Moon
Etymology
From Middle English mone schyne, mone-schyne, moone shone; equivalent to moon + shine. Illegally distilled liquor is so named because its manufacture may be conducted without artificial light at night. The verb sense is a back-formation from moonshiner.
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “moonshine”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details