At age 59 I agree “fifth” is now sorta archaic sounding. It was totally the term I heard my parents use while growing up in the 60s and 70s. So that’s what I called them when I began my drinking career. But not with whole bottles at a time :).
I suppose that nowadays I’d probably just say “we need a bottle of gin”, without specifying a bottle size at all. But with the implicit understanding we’d buy the 1/5th gallon ~= modern 750ml size. Sorta like a how a “six-pack of beer” is implicitly made up of 12 oz. containers even though beer is also sold in multipacks of other size containers.
Knowing the age demographics of Dopers it seemed odd to me that folks would question the usage even if it wasn’t the one they’d probably use today. Seeing that some posters were non-US, others were younger, and some were really asking what flavor of booze were all factors I’d not considered. Another minor oops on me, but it seems we’ve had a fun digression off the central topic of premeditated liver assault with intent to kill.
ETA: I’m looking at newspaper archives since the 2000s, and finding plenty of reference to fifths of booze in there, so it can’t be that old-timey a term, at least in Chicago.
Late edit:
I don’t interpret that modern use of “bottle” to imply that “bottle” stands for or equals 750ml. IMO a “bottle” of whatever, from beer to booze to ketchup simply means “the default size”. Which for booze happens to be “fifth” in US customary units and “750ml” in US quasi-metric units.
The first (and last) time I polished off a fifth in a single evening was at my going-away party when I left the U.S.A.F. back in '80. Straight shots of raki until the bottle was empty…followed by 2 hours in the bathroom until I was empty.
As others have said it depends on multiple factors.
Your amount of fat free mass (alcohol doesn’t dissolve in fatty tissue)
How long it takes to drink it (chug all at once vs drink over 8-16 hours).
How well your body breaks down alcohol
How you respond to certain BAC levels.
Etc.
A 300 lb bodybuilder drinking a fifth over the course of a day is not the same as a 90 lb woman chugging it in a minute. For the football player he will only have a buzz, the woman will have alcohol poisoning.
I’ve done it, but there is a point where alcohol goes from euphoric to dysphoric and you just want to sleep off the alcohol. It’s not really fun at that point.
Must be regional, because it’s a widely used term where I’m from and not old fashioned at all. “Bottle” is used, too, but it’s a little ambiguous. If you want to be precise, you say “fifth”, “pint”, “handle”, etc. True, 750ml is even more precise, but nobody I know has ever said “I have a 750 milliliter bottle of scotch, let’s get drunk!”
Or maybe it’s not regional so much as a drunkard’s lingo? I am not an alcoholic myself, but I come from a long line of them, so maybe I’m just more familiar with the jargon? I would think even casual drinkers would know what a fifth is, though.
And bartenders don’t sell fifths. They buy fifths (or handles) and resell them to patrons one shot at a time.
At a wedding I was drinking scotch/rocks and was very happy with the brand. I went up for a refill and the bartender told me he only brought one fifth and it was gone. I asked who drank it all and he laughed and told me I was his only scotch drinker. I was surprised. I have polished off a fifth of tequila in an evening (a long evening), and several times I’ve finished off a fifth of vodka.
Those here who polished off 750 ml of Southern Comfort in a sitting shock me. I’d have trouble finishing a shot-glass of the stuff.
Yeah. The key to “successful” drinking is stay away from cheap stuff, sweet stuff, or worst of all, cheap sweet stuff. I was never a heavy drinker, but those are hard-earned words of wisdom.
In the US, when you go to the liquor store for hard liquor, you get a pint, fifth, liter, or a handle (half gallon, which comes with a built-in glass handle for conveniently handling the bulk). Of course “a fifth” isn’t what people usually ask for… it’s a unit you use later when you tot up how badly you’ve gone awry. To wit: I drank an entire fifth last night, but at least it wasn’t a handle.
The cheap stuff isn’t always bad. Old Crow whiskey is better than many whiskeys that are many times more expensive ounce per ounce in my experience. A $15 handle of Old Crow tastes better than most whiskeys I’ve tried that cost $40 for a fifth.
Also Smirnoff vodka isn’t bad at $17 for a 1.75L handle. However most cheap vodkas taste like hand sanitizer. Smirnoff is at least passable.
College was educational both inside and outside the classroom.
Just a tip – if you’re planning on getting balls out drunk, NEVER consume ginger ale in the same time period. Ginger ale tastes horrible the second time around. (Also, it’s true what they say about bacon sandwiches and hangovers)
In Canada, they are commonly referred to as a “mickey” (13 fl. oz.), a “26er”, (26 fl. oz.) a “40” or “40 pounder”(40 fl. oz.), a “66er” (66 fl. oz.) and the legendary “Texas Mickey” (106 fl. oz.)
With the change to metric, the sizes are slightly smaller and are in mL but the old nicknames remain.
Not only is that possible, its not even that much by some alcoholic standards.
I’ve heard stories of people drinking half a gallon of vodka a day. I’ve even heard some stories of people drinking an entire gallon of hard liquor a day, which is five fifths a day (guess where that name came from).
That’s Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead, but yes he claimed to drink a bottle of JD every day for almost 40 years.
Yep, Vodka tends to be the drink of choice for closet alcoholics because it’s cheap, it mixes well, and it’s odour can be masked easily. It also is relatively low in sugar which reduces hangover effects.
I would have poohed-poohed this, until I my ex talked about her father who fought in WWII and Vietnam.
My FIL came home from his last tour of duty in Vietnam (1967). He was a big guy, 6’ 3" and 250 pounds lean. For about a year, he would come home from work and open the bottle of JD, chug it, and put the bottle down empty. And work on his skills to be an everlasting mean nasty drunk toward his family. As for his tempo, my ex thought the Great Santini was an accurate rendition of her father at the time (he seemed pretty mellow to me).
Up till then, I didn’t think that it was even possible to this unless you wanted to die, or were Andre the Giant
He quit after a bout of bacterial cerebral spinal meningitis which left him in a coma and it was assumed he would die, but he pulled through rather suddenly. Guess he figured that if he didn’t bottom out at six feet under, he might as well go sober.
He lasted 90 years, so whatever genes he had must have been certified for use with vast quantities of ethanol.
Interesting - I always thought a fifth was the equivalent to a mickey (a hip flask size bottle). Had no idea it was the 26 equivalent.
I remember once when I was studying in the States and we were drinking in the dorm. I mentioned a mickey and got blank stares from everyone, both Americans and other foreign students. I’d never realized it was a Canadianism.
Rule of thumb is that “average” people metabolize ethanol at the rate of about one standard drink per hour. As for spirits (40% ethanol) a standard drink is 1.5 ounces. There are 128 ounces in a gallon. A fifth of 128 is 25.6. 25.6 divided 1.5 equals about 17.
So if an average person drank a fifth over 17 hours, at an actual rate near 1 drink per hour, their metabolism would keep pace with consumption, they would cop only a marginal buzz and emerge, all else equal, unscathed. If you drank it in half that time, you would be done in about 8-9 hours, and will have accumulated about 8-9 standard drinks. How drunk would you be? One standard drink raises your blood alcohol level about 0.02%. So with 8-9 drinks, you’d be at about 0.16-0.18%. Pretty well lit, but “harmful”, in any lasting sense? Probably not for the “average” person, once they recover from their epic hangover.
And airplane bottle.
When I was drinking whiskey I used to get The One With The Handle, the 1.75, and around here I do hear people reference a fifth aka the smaller one, the one without the handle.
