Pub Glossary D

Terms and phrases associated with pub life and drinking.

D

DARTS – Popular pub game that has become an international sport, but its use in pubs has declined. Darts can take up room, with space having to be provided for the boards, scoring systems, a mat marking the places for players to stand (up to six feet from a board), and people in a pub have to move round players or wait until sharp darts have been thrown before crossing the play area with drinks, to get to toilets, etc.

DATE RAPE DRINKS – A MICKEY FINN slipped into someone’s drink to get them drunk quickly without their knowledge or consent to enable the person getting them into such a state to make sexual advances or even to get them home, or away from witnesses and commit sexual assault. Anyone using such methods to get sex should be regarded with utter contempt by the beer drinking community, and any form of sexual harassment with or without alcohol involved should be reported to the appropriate authorities. Non-alcoholic drugs like Amphetamines may be added to drinks as Mickeys as well as or in substitution for alcohol.

DEAD PUB – A pub that has closed down for good, possibly being demolished or left standing derelict. The building may be taken over and put to some other use. The inn-sign usually vanishes when this happens. Some dead pubs can be reopened as new pubs often with a new name – a pub called THE PHOENIX is often a new pub on the sight of a dead one.

DESIGNATED DRIVER – A friend willing to stay sober so that s//he can legally drive fellow drinkers home, to save expensive and often extortionate taxi fares, or waiting in the rain for a bus.

DISTILLATION Concentration of the fermented alcohol through careful distilizing, The alcohol is separated from surrounding dilutants, such as water, and different kinds of spirits use ethanol distilled directly from different kinds of food substances, i.e. vodka from potatoes, gin from Juniper berries, etc.

DOMINOES – Once popular pub game, now sadly in decline, and regarded as old fashioned. .

DOUBLES – Literally a double measure of spirit drink, twice as much in the glass.

DRAUGHT BEER – Beer served through a line directly from the storage barrels in a pub. At one time any beer was drawn directly from the barrel. The development of a beer engine in 1785 meant that barrels could be kept in a cellar, on a lower floor than the bar, as the beer could now be drawn by pumping, through lines, and poured into the glasses. Sometimes, the beer flow was assisted by pasteurised carbonation processes, and this was where some beers ceased to be regarded as real ales by aficionados. CAMRA grew at this time to help preserve the beers that were not pasteurised.