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:
“Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)