BYOB

BYOB is an initialism most commonly meant to stand for "bring your own bottle". BYOB may also be defined as "bring your own beer" or "bring your own booze". The term "booze" is slang for alcoholic drinks. Possibly for a more generic situation, it could be "bring your own beverage" or "bring your own bomb". It is also commonly used to mean "bring your own beef" at a barbecue. BYOB is often placed on an invitation to indicate that the host will not be providing alcohol and that guests are welcome to bring their own. It is also frequently used by regular bars, restaurants, or strip clubs which do not have licenses to serve liquor or alcoholic beverages in general; an alternate term for this is brownbagging. BYOB my also refer to "build your own blocks", a software tool comprising part of Scratch.

Etymology

The term is cited by some online sources to have been used first in the early 1970s^[1] to mean "bring your own bottle", with other meanings only taking hold later.

An alternate etymology is being discussed however, which is rumored to be due for consideration by BBC television's popular series Balderdash & Piffle which challenges viewers to push back the official known dates of reference for various unusual words, for consideration by the Oxford English Dictionary. This alternative suggests that in the early 19^th century, the term BYOB was used in society slang to mean "bring your own basket", with reference to group picnics. A basket would of course often include alcoholic beverages, but this is not believed to have been the primary focus of the term. This version is also supported by the Modern Drunkard Magazine.

It is generally recognized that the more modern subversion of the term was initiated by drinkers in the 1950s, but it is still contested as to on which side of the Atlantic it first occurred.

Regional variations

In Hong Kong, BYOB is abbreviated as Bring Your Own Bag, an environmental public service announcement campaign in the 1990s to encourage people to keep the use of plastic shopping bags to a minimum.^[2]

In Australia and New Zealand, the term "BYO" (Bring Your Own) emerged to describe establishments that had special liquor licenses allowing guest to bring their own bottle of wine. It is believed that restaurants in Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, were advertising as "BYO" establishments by the 1960s with the concept becoming popular in New Zealand in the late 1970s. In other parts of the world, corkage is a practice of restaurants where guest are allowed to bring their own bottles by paying a fee to the restaurant.^[3]

References

External links

• GoBYO.com, the easiest way to find restaurants that allow you to bring your own wine
• BYOBs.com, a searchable directory of BYOB restaurants
• Modern Drunkard Magazine, History and Origins of Drinking Words and Phrases