Temperance terms

July 29th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood

“Teetotalism” is “the principle or practice of never drinking any alcoholic liquor.” It sounds like a word that would have an exotic origin, but it’s actually pretty dry — which is certainly appropriate.

The “total” portion is from the Latin “totus,” for “all, whole.”

The “tee” part has nothing to do with golf or its traditional 19th hole, or with the homonym “tea,” another type of beverage. It’s actually just a repetition of the first letter to give it special emphasis.

According to “The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories,” it apparently was coined by a worker from Preston, England, named Richard Turner, who used it in a speech in 1833 “urging total abstinence from all alcohol rather than mere abstinence from spirits, advocated by some early temperance reformers.”

You see, “temperance” is actually about moderation and self-restraint.

Our national experiment in this area, called Prohibition, didn’t work out so well. There are all kinds of prohibitions, but only one rated capitalization — and two constitutional amendments, one to create it and one to repeal it.

As Mark Twain said years before Prohibition:

“Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.”

Entry Filed under: word origins