moonshine
Syllables: moon·shine/ˈmuːnʃaɪn/
moonshine noun: the light of the moon.
Noun
moonshine (countable and uncountable, plural moonshines)
- The light of the moon.
- […] her Waggon Spokes made of long Spinners legs: the Couer of the wings of Graſhoppers, her Traces of the ſmalleſt Spiders web, her coullers of the Moonſhines watry Beames […]c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- […] the newes coming every moment of the growth of the fire; so as we were forced to begin to pack up our owne goods; and prepare for their removal; and did by moonshine (it being brave dry, and moonshine, and warm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden […]1666 September 11 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “September 2nd, 1666”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume...
- High-proof alcohol (especially whiskey) that is often, but not always, produced illegally.
- They watered down the moonshine.
- “Wish I'd been more polite to that girl,” the sheriff remarked regretfully. […] I know she’d have give me another drink of that old moonshine she has.”1920, Peter B. Kyne, chapter IV, in The Understanding Heart
- Synonyms:
- bathtub gin, bootleg, coon dick, corn liquor, hooch, moonlight, mountain dew, white lightning
- Smuggled spirits, often with a specific sense; (Kent, Sussex) white brandy; (Yorkshire) gin.
- Synonyms:
- moonlight
- Nonsense.
- He was talking moonshine.
- “[…] But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills—Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?”1945, George Orwell, chapter 5, in Animal Farm
- A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
- A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
- A month.
- […] wherefore ſhould I / Stand in the plague of cuſtome, and permit / The curioſity of Nations to depriue me? / For that I am ſome twelue, or fourteene Moonſhines / Lag of a brother?c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
Verb
moonshine (third-person singular simple present moonshines, present participle moonshining, simple past and past participle moonshined)
- To make homemade (especially, illicit) alcohol, especially distilled spirits.
- His grandfather started to moonshine when things got really bad in 1933; when he got caught moonshining, he did a bit of time.
- Tommy is seventy-seven years old. He started moonshining at the age of seven. He was working for an outfit by the age of eight. He worked for the outfit fulltime until he was sixteen. He moonshined off and on until his mid-twenties. He works at a sawmill now as well.2007, Jason Sumich, “It's All Legal Until You Get Caught: Moonshining in the Southern Appalachians”, in Ethnographic and Linguistic Field Schools, volume 1: Summer 2007: Alleghany County, Appalachian...
- To make (an ingredient) into such a drink.
- A more practical critic notes that paleolithic man had a very sweet tooth, which he sated with honey. Worse, he moonshined the honey into metheglin, an alcoholic brew. Booze and junk food, in other words, are hardly modern inventions.1985 June 6, “Opinion: Topics: Lean and Rich History: Ancient Eatings”, in New York Times, retrieved 15 Dec 2023, Section A, page A26
moonshine meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Sanskrit
moonshine in Tamil
- நிலவொளி
moonshine in Urdu
- بےسروپا باتیں, چاندنی, ناجائز شراب
moonshine in Malayalam
- rubbish, waste, refuse
- അർത്ഥരഹിതഭാഷണം, ഉച്ഛിഷ്ടം, തള്ളിക്കളഞ്ഞ ഭാഗം, ചപ്പ്, ചവറ്, അശണ്ട
moonshine in Sanskrit
- moonshine
- आतप ātapa
More languagesFewer languages
- moonshine in Indonesian
- ciu bensin, oplosan
- moonshine in Vietnamese
- rượu ngang
Examples of moonshine in a sentence
- “[…] it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? […]”1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, chapter II, in Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC:
- My great grandpa was a blues lover / He'd be rockin' his moonshine to B.B.1974, Betty Davis, “They Say I'm Different”, performed by Betty Davis:
Synonyms of moonshine
- moonlight
- moon-light
- moon light
- moonbeam
- moon-beam
- moon beam
- bathtub gin
- bootleg
- coon dick
- corn liquor
3 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of moonshine
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | moonshines |
| alternative form | moon-shine |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | moonshines |
| present participle | moonshining |
| past participle | moonshined |
| past | moonshined |
Origin of moonshine
From Middle English mone schyne, mone-schyne, moone shone; equivalent to moon + shine. Illegally distilled liquor is so named because its manufacture may be conducted without artificial light at night. The verb sense is a back-formation from moonshiner.
Words formed from moonshine
Questions about moonshine
- What does moonshine mean?
- Moonshine means the light of the moon.
- What is moonshine in Tamil?
- Moonshine in Tamil is நிலவொளி. See Moonshine meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use moonshine in a sentence?
- “[…] it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? […]”
- What part of speech is moonshine?
- Moonshine can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce moonshine?
- Moonshine is pronounced /ˈmuːnʃaɪn/.
- What is the plural of moonshine?
- The plural of moonshine is moonshines.
Words near moonshine in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: moonshine (page history and authors); moonshine (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); moonshine (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); moonshine (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); आतप (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-moonshine.wav.
Cite this entry: “moonshine.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/moonshine. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.