hootch

Over dinner we taught our new traveling companions the limited Mongolian horse vocabulary we’d learned online: “choo” for go, “hootch” for stop.

He took the flashlight, muttered something, and moved down to the far end of the hootch.

An unparliamentary version of the same reference to the social influence is: "The Senate is one long procession of dinners and hootch."

Always he brought a bottle, and the excellent "hootch," as he called it, did much to make our lives bearable.

"Yes, that's what they say back East; but when you get up town you'll find every second place a saloon with all the hootch you want to drink, or have money to pay for."