four-half

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

four-half (uncountable)

1. (slang, historical) A drink of half ale, half porter, originally costing fourpence a quart.
   • 1893, Arnold Bennett, A Letter Home:

     At nine o'clock that night Darkey was still consuming four-half, and relating certain adventures by sea which, he averred, had happened to himself.

   • 1918 March, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], chapter IV, in The Return of the Soldier, 1st US edition, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, pages 96–97:

     [H]e regarded the whole world as her grave, and the tipsy sergeants in scarlet, the carter crying for a pint of four-half, and even the horses dipping their mild noses to the trough in the courtyard seemed to be defiling it by their happy, simple appetites.