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The Sex Lives of Cannibals vocabulary
1 beverage-related (wine, spirits, other) vocab words
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kava
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tags: [drink]
► definition
Definition:a narcotic and mud water ritually drunk in much of Polynesia and Melanesia. [It] is derived from the roots of Piper methysticum, a pepper plant requiring water and rich soil and hillsides and occasional cool weather and all sorts of other conditions not found on Kiribati.J. Maarten Troost. The Sex Lives of Cannibals, p.131 (2004)
painting: by John La Farge (1891)
► uses
Uses:
It appeared that the president's family had discovered kava, [...]. I put aside my bicycle and entered a room barren of all furnishing or ornament, save for mats, where a dozen men reclined in a satisfied stupor around a kava bowl.
J. Maarten Troost. The Sex Lives of Cannibals, p.131 (2004)
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Clearly, this was different from drinking wine. With kava, one didn’t admire its lush hue, or revel in its aromatic bouquet, or note the complex interplay of oak and black currant. This was more like heroin. Its consumption was something that was to be endured. The effect was everything.
J. Maarten Troost. Getting Stoned with Savages (2006)
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Tu-Kila-Kila leaned back, drained his cocoanut cup of intoxicating kava, and surveyed the unwonted apparition on the reef long and carefully.
Grant Allen. The Great Taboo (1890)
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His age might be about thirty, and by the white scurf on his skin, and his sore eyes, he appeared to be a hard drinker of kava.
Andrew Kippis. Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook : with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods (1788)
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