bootleg

19 January 2026

Bootleg marks a product that is either inferior or illicitly produced. But why bootleg and when did the term come into being?

Literal use of bootleg to refer to the part of a boot that covers the lower leg dates to the sixteenth century. And it is commonly thought that bootleg liquor is so named because smugglers would hide bottles of illegal booze in their boots. That explanation is possible, but the early evidence points to another reason, that the term comes from mixing alcohol with adulterants, including boot leather, to give it the appearance of flavor of aged liquor. Bootleg liquor is also associated with the Prohibition era, but while the ban on liquor in the 1920s boosted its use, the term is quite a bit older.

The earliest known use of bootleg in reference to liquor is from a satirical piece in New York’s  Subterranean and Working Man’s Advocate of 16 November 1844 mocking the Whig party for losing the 1844 presidential election, in which Democrat James K. Polk narrowly defeated Whig Henry Clay:

GREAT AUCTION SALE.

Will be sold at the Whig Head Quarters in this city, on the first fine day, the following ALL IMPORTANT ARTICLES for carrying an Election. They are the effects of the late Whig Party. To the “Natives,” or any other New Party, they would prove an invaluable acquisition, and to any such they will be sold (at private sale) very cheap.

Lot 1. 4 Living Eagles, that from long practice in the processions of all political parties, know how to carry their heads in any party, no matter how crooked its principles.

   “  2. 9 Puncheons of Old Rum (real New England ‘boot-leg,’) the balance of a very large stock that has gone off very freely.

   “  3. […]

The Whigs lost the election in 1844 but would have subsequent victories and not actually dissolve until ten years later, following their defeat in the 1852 presidential election, in which Democrat Franklin Pierce crushed Whig Winfield Scott and saw the beginnings of the rise of the Republican party.

Nineteen years after that first known use and on the other side of the country we get the following from California’s Knight’s Landing News of 24 October 1863 which points to adulteration with boot leather, among other unsavory ingredients, as being the metaphor underlying the term:

“GOOD LIQUOR” AT TROY.—In a suit recently brought before a Justice’s Court in Troy, involving a matter of liquor, the defendant further answering says that the liquor plaintiff seeks to recover for, was nothing more than twenty-two cent whisky colored with logwood, tanbark, tincture of bedbugs, old boot-legs and copperas; that he sold this vile stuff at retail to his customers; that they died—to his damage two hundred dollars.

We see bootleg applied to something other than liquor, in this case coffee, in Philadelphia’s Evening Telegraph of 1868. The article in question is about New York and indirectly associates the stuff with boots:

The bootblacks of the Park are of an eminently confiding and convivial nature. The one with whom I had the pleasure of conversing, informed me on the first moment of our acquaintance that he always dined at Delmonico’s when he came to the city, and that his favorite repast consisted of boot-leg coffee and double-breasted doughnuts.

And this piece about the prison conditions that appeared in the New York Herald of 26 July 1872 again associates the coffee given to prisoners with black boot leather:

“What do you get for supper?”
“Bread and coffee. The coffee is as black and filthy as I ever saw. The old stagers up there call it
‘BOOT LEG’
and it is about as black as that. It’s infernal stuff, I tell you.”

With Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s, not only did the use of bootleg liquor become more common, but we also start to see many other types of inferior or illicit products being labeled as bootleg, such as bootleg milk and bootleg jazz records.

So the metaphor underlying the term is uncertain, but the available evidence points to boot leather being used to adulterate liquor and coffee as the origin.

Sources:

“Good Liquor at Troy.” Knight’s Landing News (California), 24 October 1863, 1/5. Archive.org.

“Great Auction Sale.” Subterranean and Working Man’s Advocate (New York City), 16 November 1844, 3/2. Archive.org.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 7 December 2025. s.v. bootleg, n., bootleg, adj., bootleg, v., bootlegger, n.

“New Yorkisms.” Evening Telegraph (Philadelphia), 20 August 1868, 5/1. NewspaperArchive.com.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 25 March 2025, s.v. bootleg, n. & adj., bootleg, v., bootlegger, n.

“Punishment of Prisoners.” New York Herald, 26 July 1872, 10/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, c. 1925. Orange County Archives/Flickr. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.