Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
four-half en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Meanings
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(historical, slang, uncountable) A drink of half ale, half porter, originally costing fourpence a quart.
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.
1893, Arnold Bennett, A Letter Home:[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.
1918 March, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], chapter IV, in The Return of the Soldier, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., published 1918, →OCLC, pages 96–97: