Name Origin
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "shot glass" first appeared in print in The New York Times during the 1940s, but in fact several examples exist from the 1930s. However, although it was used by some, the term apparently did not come into common usage until much later.
Many references from the 1800s describe giving a jigger of whiskey or rum to workers who were digging canals. Most shot glasses are found in the United States, but shot glasses from before the 1940s are very rare.
Before Prohibition in the U.S. in the early to mid 1900s, thin-sided whiskey glasses were common. After Prohibition, these were replaced by shot glasses with a thick base and thick sides.
Because the word shot also means "dose" or "small amount", it may simply be that these small glasses are called shot glasses because they hold small amounts. However, there are a range of more-complex stories about the origin of the style of glass, and its name. Few of them stand up to much scrutiny – either they place the origin decades before the term appeared in print, or they describe an item that had nothing to do with drinking liquor:
Read more about this topic: Shot Glass
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.”
—Neal Cassady (1926–1968)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)