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calabogus

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3 months ago chained_bear said:

Also spelled callibogus, calebogus, calibogus.

"Frock-coated charlatans arrived from St. John's with bottles of calabogus in their black leather bags, selling a tincture of boiled spruce gum and molasses and rum to the desperate mothers of dying children. They came like vultures. And one of these fraudulent apothecaries . . . was Edwin Pratt."
—David Macfarlane, The Danger Tree, 59

"Apparently a maritime beverage of eastern North America: ... A drink made by mixing spruce beer, rum or other liquor and molasses; formerly also in clipped form calli with specifying word egg, king, etc."
Dictionary of Newfoundland English

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