English

Noun

moonshine ‎(countable and uncountable, plural moonshines)

1. (literally) The light of the moon; moonlight.
2. Illegally distilled liquor.

   They watered down the moonshine.

   • 1920, Peter B. Kyne, The Understanding Heart, Chapter IV

     “Wish I'd been more polite to that girl,” the sheriff remarked regretfully. “ I ain't had a bite to eat since four o'clock this morning, and I'm hungry as a wolverine. … I know she'd have give me another drink of that old moonshine she has.”

3. (colloquial) nonsense

   He was talking moonshine.

   • 2012, David Attenborough, interview.^[1]

     "We forget what we have learned in the last 60 years. At university I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed."

4. (mathematics) A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
5. (US) A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
6. (obsolete) A month.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I, Scene 2,

     Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom and permit / The curiosity of nations to deprive me, / For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother?

Synonyms

• (moonlight): moonbeam
• (illegal liquor): bathtub gin, bootleg, corn liquor, hooch, mountain dew, white lightning, coon-dick, coondick

Derived terms

• eggs in moonshine
• monstrous moonshine
• moonshiney, moonshiny

Translations

References

1. ↑ Robin McKie (28 October 2012), “David Attenborough: force of nature”, in (Please provide the title of the work), The Observer, retrieved 29 October 2012

Portuguese

Noun

moonshine m (uncountable)

1. (rare) moonshine (Appalachian home-made liquor)