Meanings
- CanadaUSobsoleteslanguncountableHigh-proof, low-quality whiskey, generally produced illegally.
[…] he slept of[f] his load of squirrel whiskey and went home forgetting a duty for which he was discharged.
1891, “Letter to the editor”, in The Railway Conductor, volume 8, number 6, page 1913 more examples
He left the yard and went down past the station, cutting across the tracks north of the water-tower, intending to drink squirrel whiskey in Luke Horton’s flour and feed store at the end of Main Street.
1927, Morley Callaghan, “Amuck in the Bush”, in Morley Callaghan’s Stories, published 1959, page 83There was no restraint as to the quality of liquor they sold, whether squirrel whiskey or moonshine, just so long as it provided the patrons with a kick.
1960, James A. McRae, chapter 11, in Call Me Tomorrow, page 108I picked up a bottle of whiskey, a fine old Dundee, though it could have been a Chicago-saloon, two-bits-a-shot, squirrel whiskey for all either of us cared at that moment.
2014, Robert Olen Butler, chapter 39, in The Empire of Night, page 252
Synonyms & antonyms
nounHigh-proof, low-quality whiskey, generally produced illegally.
Origin
According to a widely repeated jocular explanation, “it [makes] those who [drink] it inclined to climb a tree,”; but the term is more plausibly explained by the fact that “squirrels were often drowned in the open-air mash-tubs used by moonshiners” and/or that the liquor was aged “by tying the keg in a tall pine tree”.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
squirrel whiskey. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/squirrel%20whiskey
“squirrel whiskey.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/squirrel%20whiskey. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “squirrel whiskey,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/squirrel%20whiskey.
Source: squirrel whiskey on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.