Definition: the small dark globose astringent fruit of the blackthorn; also : blackthorn

Quotation: “Well I sipped along on that sloe gin fizz until I felt plumb drunk. I can’t hold liquor at all and that drink tasted more like Kool-Aid than liquor. Finally I said ‘I better have me another one of them things!’” (from Still Woman Enough: A Memoir by Loretta Lynn)

No, I didn’t actually read Still Woman Enough, I came across the word in the crossword puzzle. Apparently it’s a common cross-word, after all it’s got a lot of common letters and makes for a nice short filler word when you just can’t make that last letter a ‘t’ or ‘w’ instead of an ‘e’. Unfortunately, I haven’t done enough crosswords in my day to automatically pick out “Gin flavoring” as “sloe” although that clue did turn on a little light in the back of my head…something about a “slow gin fizz”. I now know that it’s a “sloe gin fizz” and that Loretta Lynn really likes them.