Where did the name come from?

The origin of the term “shot glass” is up for debate. The OED notes that the earliest literary use of the term came from the New York Times in the 1940s, but the term “shot” preceded that Times article by many years.

As far as historians can tell, the earliest written reference came in 1913, in the book A History of Cass County Indiana from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. In the book, the author, Dr. Jehu Z. Powell depicts a story from roughly 1857, in which townspeople protested a man attempting to open a saloon. When the barkeeper received his first barrel of whiskey, an angry townsperson shot a hole through it, immediately draining it of its contents. In the words of Powell, “The remedy was effectual, and the saloon was not opened, and ever after, when the boys wanted a drink they would ask for a ‘shot of redeye’.”

While this seems a likely reasoning for the name, there are plenty of theories. Some have posited that shot glasses were first used for placing lead shots in at the dinner table, as meat often still had shards from the bullets. Others say that “shot” is an Americanization of the name “Schott”, and that the founder of the shot glass is the glasswork company Jenaer Glaswerk Schott & Genossen.

As history is, undoubtedly, moving forward and not backward, it’s likely that we’ll never know exactly where the name came from. But it’s always fun to speculate.