Cock″tail′ (?), n. 1. A beverage made of brandy, whisky, or gin, iced, flavored, and sweetened.
2. (Stock Breeding) A horse, not of pure breed, but having only one eighth or one sixteenth impure blood in his veins. Darwin.
3. A mean, half-hearted fellow; a coward.
It was in the second affair that poor little Barney showed he was a cocktail.
Thackeray.
4. (Zoöl.) A species of rove beetle; — so called from its habit of elevating the tail.