screech n DC ~ Nfld (1957-). Popular name for a variety of cheap, dark Demerara rum bottled in Newfoundland; trade-name of a type of rum marketed with the label 'Screech.'
[1904 Daily News 21 Sep "A Razzle-dazzle": The great unwashed, if he's not squashed, / Where rotten rum does flow. boys, /'Tis he will screech upon the beach / To join this Wild West show, boys.] [1944 JONES broadside] "Darn the Man that I Can Get": I have a few cents in the bank, / A home down by the beach, / And the very first night I am married / Hub will have a bottle of screech. 1964 Daily News 11 May, p. 4 But those were the days when what is now known as 'screech' could be purchased for two dollars a bottle or less. T 141/68-651 Course, a bottle o' rum—you get a bottle o' screech then for about a dollar fifty. 1973 PINSENT 35 If I'm old enough to slug me guts out in a paper mill, I'm old enough to drink screech. 1979 Evening Telegram 21 Apr, p. 14 God help me with my plebian tastes, but I loves [a] drop of Screech and Pepsi.
