four-half
noun1
Historical, Slang A drink of half ale, half porter, originally costing fourpence a quart.
- At nine o'clock that night Darkey was still consuming four-half, and relating certain adventures by sea which, he averred, had happened to himself.1893, Arnold Bennett, A Letter Home:
- [H]e regarded the whole world as her grave, and the tipsy sergeants in scarlet, the carter crying for a pint of four-half, and even the horses dipping their mild noses to the trough in the courtyard seemed to be defiling it by their happy, simple appetites.1918 March, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], chapter IV, in The Return of the Soldier, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., published 1918, →OCLC, pages 96–97: