Folklore #236
Folklore & calendar
For four hundred years moonshine meant something with no substance to it — appearance without reality — and only later attached itself to illicit spirits.
The logic in both senses is the same: the Moon gives light with no warmth in it. Shakespeare uses the older sense freely. The drink took the name because the work was done at night, and English smugglers were called moonshiners a century before American ones were.
Tradition: English; the older sense from the 15th century · checked Sep 2026