Eli Whitney & the cotton gin

Today, on the anniversary of his birth in 1765, we remember Eli Whitney, Junior, the inventor whose cotton gin revolutionized cotton harvesting in the antebellum South. The cotton gin—which separates the detritus from the desirable parts of cotton far more efficiently than hand-sorting does—increased the demand for slaves and helped strengthen the regime of King Cotton.

Whitney's invention brought him fame, if not fortune. He hadn't intended on the widespread sale of his cotton gin (Whitney and his partner had planned on making money by cleaning cotton for a share of the profits), but the drum's simplicity and utility helped breed infringement issues, legal wrangling, and near bankruptcy for its inventor and manufacturer.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin took its name from the gin that is short for engine; since 1796 (two years after Whitney's patent was granted), cotton gin has been used to name the machine that separates the seeds, hull, and foreign material from cotton.

But of course, that's not the only gin noun in our lexicon. The other gin, however, has a different derivation. The colorless alcoholic gin is a shortening and alteration of geneva, the term for a highly aromatic bitter gin originally made in the Netherlands. Geneva is itself a modification of the Dutch version of juniper, the berry which flavors gin.