Cock"tail` (?), n.
1.
A beverage made of brandy, whisky, or gin, iced, flavored, and sweetened.
[U. S.]
2. Stock Breeding
A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in his veins.
Darwin.
3.
A mean, half-hearted fellow; a coward.
[Slang, Eng.]
It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.
Thackeray.
4. Zool.
A species of rove beetle; -- so called from its habit of elevating the tail.
© Webster 1913.