the.com/bartender
part chemist, part therapist, fully armed with a corkscrew and your secrets
means A person who mixes and serves drinks behind a bar, and often listens to whatever you say afterward.
from A transparent compound of "bar" plus "tender." The "bar" is the long counter itself, named for the literal barrier of wood or rail separating servers from drinkers — the same "bar" that bars a door. "Tender" here means one who tends or attends, the same sense found in "bartender's" cousins like "goaltender" and "caretaker." So a bartender is, quite plainly, one who tends the bar — an American coinage from the 19th century, when the long mahogany bar became the centerpiece of the saloon.
- old roots
- Taverns hired pourers since ancient Rome's thermopolia
- speakeasy era
- Prohibition turned bartending into a criminal art form
- flair born
- Bottle-juggling tricks date to 1800s saloon showmen
- free read
- They diagnose your week in one drink order
floyd mayweather jr — boxer who worked as bartender in las vegas before his fighting career took off in the 1990s
tom cruise in cocktail — character brian flanagan, 1988 film that popularized flair bartending culture