Word of the Day

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If the idea of a carbonated bevvy flavored with gentian root makes you thirsty to wet your whistle, then you’ve got some moxie, friend! Lowercase moxie—which today is a synonym of both nerve and verve—originated as uppercase Moxie, as in Moxie Nerve Food, a patent medicine and tonic invented by Dr. Augustin Thompson and sold in New England in the 1870s. Within a decade, when it was clear his drink wasn’t really medicinal, he carbonated Moxie and marketed it as a kind of 19th-century energy drink with a “delicious blend of the bitter and the sweet.” The soft drink and its advertising slogans (among them Make Mine Moxie!) eventually caught on around the country. The beverage was even a favorite of Charlotte’s Web author E. B. White, who wrote, “Moxie contains gentian root, which is the path to the good life.” The semantic jump from “a drink that gives you energy” to “energy” itself is as natural as a good advertising campaign. By 1930, moxie had acquired its earliest modern sense referring to vim and pep.