moonshine

noun

1. (countable, literally, uncountable)The light of the moon.

   “[…] her Waggon Spokes made of long Spinners legs: the Couer of the wings of Graſhoppers, her Traces of the ſmalleſt Spiders web, her coullers of the Moonſhines watry Beames […]”

   “[…] the newes coming every moment of the growth of the fire; so as we were forced to begin to pack up our owne goods; and prepare for their removal; and did by moonshine (it being brave dry, and moonshine, and warm weather) carry much of my goods into the garden […]”

   “[…] I have been in an Ague fit, ever ſince ſhut of Evening; what with the fright of Trees by the High-way, which look'd maliciouſly like Thieves, by Moon-ſhine: and what with Bulruſhes by the River-ſide, that ſhak'd like Spears, and Lances at me.”

   “[…] O Nymph more bright than moon-ſhine night, like Kidlings blithe and merry […]”

   “In mist or cloud on mast or shroud / It perch’d for vespers nine, / Whiles all the night thro’ fog smoke-white / Glimmer’d the white moon-shine.”

2. (countable, literally, uncountable)The light of the moon.
3. (countable, literally, uncountable)The light of the moon.
4. (countable, informal, uncountable)High-proof alcohol (especially whiskey) that is often, but not always, produced illegally.

   “They watered down the moonshine.”

   ““Wish I'd been more polite to that girl,” the sheriff remarked regretfully. […] I know she’d have give me another drink of that old moonshine she has.””

   “My great grandpa was a blues lover / He'd be rockin' his moonshine to B.B. King and Jimmy Reed”

5. (UK, archaic, countable, dialectal, uncountable)Smuggled spirits, often with a specific sense; (Kent, Sussex) white brandy; (Yorkshire) gin.
6. (informal, uncountable)Nonsense.

   “He was talking moonshine.”

   ““[…] But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills—Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?””

   “We forget what we have learned in the last 60 years. At university I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.”

7. (uncountable)A branch of pure mathematics relating the Monster group to an invariant of elliptic functions.
8. (US, countable, uncountable)A spiced dish of eggs and fried onions.
9. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A month.

   “[…] wherefore ſhould I / Stand in the plague of cuſtome, and permit / The curioſity of Nations to depriue me? / For that I am ſome twelue, or fourteene Moonſhines / Lag of a brother?”

verb

1. (intransitive)To make homemade (especially, illicit) alcohol, especially distilled spirits.

   “His grandfather started to moonshine when things got really bad in 1933; when he got caught moonshining, he did a bit of time.”

   “Tommy is seventy-seven years old. He started moonshining at the age of seven. He was working for an outfit by the age of eight. He worked for the outfit fulltime until he was sixteen. He moonshined off and on until his mid-twenties. He works at a sawmill now as well.”

2. (transitive)To make (an ingredient) into such a drink.

   “A more practical critic notes that paleolithic man had a very sweet tooth, which he sated with honey. Worse, he moonshined the honey into metheglin, an alcoholic brew. Booze and junk food, in other words, are hardly modern inventions.”