/ · 1894 Brewer’s · T · Tap the Admiral
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To suck liquor from a cask by a straw. Hotten says it was first done with the rum-cask in which the body of Admiral Lord Nelson was brought to England, and when the cask arrived the admiral was found “high and dry.”
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.