cocktail [E17th] The original use of cocktail was as a term to describe a creature with a tail like that of a cock, in particular a horse with a docked tail that would stick up. Hunting horses and stagecoach horses generally had their tails shortened in this way, which led to the term being applied to a racehorse which was not a thoroughbred but ‘of mixed blood’, with a cock-tailed horse somewhere in its pedigree. It may be that the current sense of an alcoholic drink with a mixture of ingredients, which dates from the early 19th century, comes from this use, though the exact origin of the term is much debated.