Cat's water is a wonderfully backhanded piece of obsolete British slang for gin — specifically cheap, rough gin.
Cat's water is a wonderfully backhanded piece of obsolete British slang for gin — specifically cheap, rough gin. The implication is obvious: this stuff is barely fit for a cat, let alone a person. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, gin was the drink of the urban poor, sold in dodgy establishments and associated with social ruin. Calling it cat's water was the slang world's commentary on its quality. The term is gloriously extinct but paints a vivid picture of the gin-soaked streets of Georgian London.
He could only afford a glass of cat's water from the street corner seller, but it did the job.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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(archaic, slang) Gin.
(slang, dated) An alcoholic drink.
Dated British slang meaning drunk, specifically heavily intoxicated. The term is a direct derivation from gin, the spirit historically associated with cheap, mass public drunkenness in 18th- and 19th-century England — think Hogarth's Gin Lane. While largely obsolete in everyday speech today, it occasionally surfaces in historical fiction, period dramas, or used ironically by those fond of vintage slang.
(UK, slang, obsolete) The theft of pint and quart pots and small pewter spirit measures from public houses.
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(slang, obsolete) Gin.
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