a word derived from the Latin “taburna,” historically has generally denoted a place in which people can gather for food and drink, sometimes lodging, and occasionally various forms of entertainment. In 1700s America, taverns played a large role in colonial public life. One step above an ale house, a tavern was often a place where people might meet to discuss politics and issues of the day. Interestingly, even in the 1700s, the management or ownership of a tavern was considered a respectable profession for a woman and was one of the few acceptable ways that a woman might support herself and her household, especially if she had become widowed.

In England taverns were originally retail establishments of vintners, and, as Bishop Earle wrote in 1628, are “a degree above an ale house, where men are drunk with more credit or apology.” For a largely abstemious man, lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson spent a fair amount of time in the taverns in, and around, London’s Fleet Street. Taverns, premises that purveyed a variety of drinks, not solely beer, could attract a different clientele than other drinking places, and they certainly seemed to satisfy the expectations of the good doctor. Johnson’s elegant oracular deliverance of March 1776 tells us much of what we need to know about the heyday of the tavern: There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, and ever so much desire that everybody should be easy, in the nature of things it cannot be; there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests, the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him, and no man but a very impudent dog indeed can as freely command what is in another man’s house as if it were his own; whereas, at a tavern there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure to be welcome, and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servant will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please.

Over the top? Well, some might think so, but perhaps we should remember that, in Johnson’s day, the London tavern attained its zenith in terms of social importance. It should also be remembered that Johnson sometimes attempted to justify the fact that London’s myriad of taverns were, for an Englishman, a kind of substitute for home life.

See also coaching inns, public houses (pubs).