Supernacʹulum.
The very best wine. The word is Low Latin for “upon the nail,” meaning that the wine is so good the drinker leaves only enough in his glass to make a bead on his nail. The French say of first-class wine, “It is fit to make a ruby on the nail” (faire rubis sur lʹongle), referring to the residue left which is only sufficient to make a single drop on the nail. Tom Nash says, “After a man has drunk his glass, it is usual, in the North, to turn the bottom of the cup upside down, and let a drop fall upon the thumb-nail. If the drop rolls off, the drinker is obliged to fill and drink again.” Bishop Hall alludes to the same custom: “The Duke Tenterbelly … exclaims … ‘Let never this goodly-formed goblet of wine go jovially through me;ʹ and then he set it to his mouth, stole it off every drop, save a little remainder, which he was by custom to set upon his thumb-nail and lick off.”
“ʹTis here! the supernaculum! twenty years
Of age, if ʹtis a day.”
Supernaculum. Entirely. To drink supernaculum is to leave no heel-taps; to drink so as to leave just enough not to roll off one’s thumb-nail if poured upon it, but only to remain there as a wine-bead.
“This is after the fashion of Switzerland. Clear off neat, supernaculum.”—Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel, bk. i. 5.
“Their jests were supernaculum,
I snatched the rubies from each thumb,
And in this crystal have them here.
