The Etymology of Highball
Highball as the name of a drink first appears in American English in 1898, but the metaphor is railroad. From the 1880s American freight and passenger trains used a "high ball" signal — a coloured ball raised to the top of a pole at a station to mean "clear track, full speed ahead". To "give a train the highball" was to wave it through. Bartenders, many of them serving railroad workers, picked up the slang for a tall, fast-poured drink: a measure of whisky topped with a generous pour of soda over ice, ready to drink in a single tall glass. The name stuck. Highball became the standard American term for the family of spirit-and-mixer long drinks, and Japanese postwar bar culture borrowed the word ハイボール (haibōru) for the same combination, which Suntory’s marketing revived as a global trend in the 2010s. The drink rides on a railroad signal whose meaning has otherwise been forgotten.