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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmuːnʃaɪn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: moon‧shine

moonshine (countable and uncountable, plural moonshines)

1. (literally) The light of the moon.

   Synonyms: moonlight, moonbeam

   • 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 Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:

     […] 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 […]

   • 1666 September 12 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “September 2nd, 1666 (Lord’s Day)”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys[…], volume (please specify |volume=I to X), London: George Bell & Sons[…]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1893–1899, →OCLC:

     […] 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 […]

   • 1690, [John] Dryden, Amphitryon; or, The Two Sosia’s.[…], London: […] J[acob] Tonson,[…]; and M. Tonson[…], published 1691, →OCLC, Act II, scene i, page 11:

     […] I have been in an Ague fit, ever ſince ſhut of Evening; what with the fright of Trees by the High-way, which look'd maliciouſly like Thieves, by Moon-ſhine: and what with Bulruſhes by the River-ſide, that ſhak'd like Spears, and Lances at me.

   • 1718, John Gay, “O ruddier than the Cherry”, from Act 2 of George Frideric Handel’s opera Acis and Galatea, page 47:

     […] O Nymph more bright than moon-ſhine night, like Kidlings blithe and merry […]

   • 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, in Lyrical Ballads, Part I, page 10:

     In mist or cloud on mast or shroud / It perch’d for vespers nine, / Whiles all the night thro’ fog smoke-white / Glimmer’d the white moon-shine.

   • 1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night[…], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club[…], →OCLC:

     So I came forth of the sea and sat down on the edge of an island in the moonshine, where a passer-by found me and, carrying me to the his house, besought me of love-liesse; but I smote him on the head, so that he all but died; whereupon he carried me forth and sold me to the merchant from whom thou hadst me, […]

   • 1908 June, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, chapter II, in Anne of Green Gables, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC:

     “[…] it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? […]”

2. (informal) High-proof alcohol (especially whiskey) that is often, but not always, produced illegally.

   Synonyms: bathtub gin, bootleg, (offensive) coon dick, corn liquor, hooch, (Britain, dialectal, archaic) moonlight, mountain dew, white lightning

   They watered down the moonshine.

   • 1920, Peter B. Kyne, chapter IV, in The Understanding Heart:

     “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.”

   • 1974, Betty Davis, “They Say I'm Different”, performed by Betty Davis:

     My great grandpa was a blues lover / He'd be rockin' his moonshine to B.B. King and Jimmy Reed

3. (UK, dialectal, archaic) Smuggled spirits, often with a specific sense; (Kent, Sussex) white brandy; (Yorkshire) gin.

   Synonym: (Britain, dialectal, archaic) moonlight

4. (uncountable, informal) Nonsense.

   He was talking moonshine.

   • 1945, George Orwell, chapter 5, in Animal Farm‎^[1]:

     “[…] 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?”

   • 2012 October 28, Robin McKie, “David Attenborough: force of nature”, in The Observer‎^[2], retrieved 29 October 2012:

     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.

5. (mathematics, uncountable) A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
6. (US, cooking) A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
7. (obsolete) A month.
   • 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, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     […] 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?

• moon-shine

moonshine (third-person singular simple present moonshines, present participle moonshining, simple past and past participle moonshined)

1. (intransitive) 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.

   • 2007, Jason Sumich, “It's All Legal Until You Get Caught: Moonshining in the Southern Appalachians”, in Ethnographic and Linguistic Field Schools‎^[3], volume 1: Summer 2007: Alleghany County, Appalachian State University, retrieved 15 December 2023:

     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.

2. (transitive) To make (an ingredient) into such a drink.
   • 1985 June 6, “Opinion: Topics: Lean and Rich History: Ancient Eatings”, in New York Times‎^[4], retrieved 15 December 2023, Section A, page A26:

     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.

• “moonshine”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Unadapted borrowing from English moonshine.

moonshine m or (rare) f (uncountable)

1. (uncommon) moonshine (Appalachian homemade liquor)
   • 1917 November 26, Selecta, volume XIII, number 46, Rio de Janeiro, page 7:

     E’ que a discutida medida é mais difficil de executar-se do que a principio se imaginava, pois que ha propriamente autoridades que ganham, de parceria com os “bootleggers”, os estupendos lucros adquiridos com a “moonshine” (“brilho da lua”) — como é vulgarmente conhecida “a cachaça” avariada na America do Norte.

     The fact is that the measure in question [Prohibition] is harder to enforce than it was initially believed, because there are authorities who benefit, alongside “bootleggers”, from the astounding profits acquired from “moonshine” — as the bootleg liquor is commonly known in North America.

   • 1967 May 7, “Agropecuária em resumo”, in Correio da Manhã, volume LXVI, number 22725, Rio de Janeiro, page 38:

     Em prosseguimento, no Instituto Agronômico de Campinas, experiências sôbre a fabricação de aguardente de milho, bebida favorita de milhões de norteamericanos^[sic], conhecida como bourbon, moonshine, corn licquor^[sic] e outros nomes, mas ainda não produzida em grande escala no Brasil.

     Subsequently, at the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, experiments were conducted regarding the production of corn liquor, a favorite beverage of millions of North Americans, known as bourbon, moonshine, corn licquor, and other names, but not yet produced on a large scale in Brazil.

   • 2003 May 28, “Álcool: a arte de beber bem [Alcohol: the art of drinking well]”, in Jornal do Brasil, volume 113, number 50, Rio de Janeiro, page B6:

     Ela diz que […] países que apresentam estas restrições têm grandes índices de moonshine, nome dado às bebidas fabricadas em casa, de forma artesanal.

     She says that […] countries that present such restrictions [restricted drinking times] have high rates of moonshine, the name given to homemade, small-scale liquor.