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Moonshine vs Poteen - What's the difference?

moonshine | poteen |

As nouns the difference between moonshine and poteen

is that moonshine is the light of the moon; moonlight while poteen is illegally produced Irish whiskey; moonshine.

moonshine

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (literally) The light of the moon; moonlight.
  • Illegally distilled liquor, so named because much of the manufacturing process is often conducted without artificial light at night when the moon is shining.
  • They watered down the moonshine .
  • * 1920 , , The Understanding Heart , Chapter IV
  • “Wish I'd been more polite to that girl,” the sheriff remarked regretfully. “ I ain't had a bite to eat since four o'clock this morning, and I'm hungry as a wolverine. … I know she'd have give me another drink of that old moonshine she has.”
  • (colloquial) nonsense
  • He was talking moonshine .
  • * , 2012 interview.'>citation
  • "We forget what we have learned in the last 60 years. At university I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine , I was informed."
  • (mathematics) A branch of pure mathematics relating the monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions; see (monstrous moonshine).
  • (US) A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
  • (obsolete) A month.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom and permit / The curiosity of nations to deprive me / For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother?

    Synonyms

    * (moonlight) moonbeam * (illegal liquor) bathtub gin, bootleg, corn liquor, hooch, mountain dew, white lightning, coon-dick, coondick

    Derived terms

    * moonshiney, moonshiny

    References

    ----

    poteen

    English

    (wikipedia poteen)

    Alternative forms

    * potcheen * potheen * poitin

    Noun

  • (Ireland) Illegally produced Irish whiskey; moonshine.
  • * 1835', Philip Dixon Hardy, ''The '''Poteen Still: A Tale Founded on Fact'', in ''The Dublin Penny Journal ,
  • The Irish peasantry practice the distillation of that illicit spirituous liquor, so well known by the name of poteen whiskey , with a most unaccountable infatuation.
  • * 1907 , ,
  • “Make haste now and go up and tell your mother to hide the poteen'”—his mother used to sell ' poteen —“for I’m after seeing the biggest party of peelers and yeomanry passing by on the rocks was ever seen on the island.”
  • * 2002 , Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea , Vintage 2003, page 92:
  • He began to rove the country at night, trudging out to shebeens or crossroads dances, to the ceilidhs and poteen sessions that sometimes followed Fair Days in the small towns of Connemara.

    Usage notes

    This term usually refers to illegally-produced whiskey; whiskey produced in the same way but legally is usually not referred to as poteen . English words suffixed with -een ----