Meaning & Analysis
To empty a cup of wine or liquor so thoroughly that when the vessel is inverted over the drinker's thumbnail, the remaining residue forms a single, stable bead ('pearl') without running off.
Insights
Total Exhaustion
Metaphorically, it signifies doing something to the absolute limit or bottom, engaging in an activity until resources are entirely depleted.
Performative Excess
It represents the transformation of a basic biological act (drinking) into a competitive social ritual. It symbolizes a lifestyle where excess is disciplined by specific rules of etiquette and 'fashion.'
The Test of Sincerity
In the context of toasting, drinking 'supernaculum' proves the drinker's dedication to the person being toasted; leaving no drop behind symbolizes holding nothing back in loyalty or affection.
The 'Nagelprobe' Ritual
The term is a Mock-Latin corruption of the German phrase *auf den Nagel* ('on the nail') or Latin *super ungulam*. As described by Thomas Nashe (1592), it involved a specific game: after draining the cup, the drinker turned it upside down on their thumbnail. If the drop ran off (was too large), it was proof the cup wasn't truly empty, and the drinker had to drink again as 'penance.' It turned drunkenness into a sport of precision.
Fashionable Vice
The 1617 citation ('He is a man of no fashion that cannot drinke supernaculum') reveals that this obscure drinking trick became a shibboleth for the Elizabethan and Jacobean elite. Knowledge of the term and the ability to perform the nail test distinguished the worldly 'gallant' from the unrefined commoner.
Macaronic Humor
Using a Latin-sounding term (*supernaculum*) for a drinking game reflects the university wit of the era. It elevates a debauched activity with a veneer of scholastic dignity, mocking the seriousness of academic language by applying it to the tavern.
Cross-Cultural Import
While the custom is German in origin (*Nagelprobe*), Nashe identifies it as 'new come out of Fraunce.' This illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of vice in Early Modern London; drinking trends were imported alongside fashions in clothing, with foreign customs adding an allure of sophistication.
Rhetorical Devices
Neologism
The word itself is a creative invention—a hybrid of Latin preposition and vernacular root—acting as a badge of insider knowledge.
Visual Imagery
The concept relies on the vivid, minute image of a 'pearl' of wine balancing on a fingernail, focusing attention on a tiny detail amidst the chaos of a drinking bout.
Synecdoche
The 'nail' stands in for the entire ritual of testing and proof, encapsulating the whole drinking game in a single anatomical reference.
Transcription
Quotations
I drinke this to thee super naculum.
Drinking super nagulum, a deuisc of drinking new come out of Fraunce; which is, after a man hath turnd vp the bottom of the cup, to drop it on his naile, and make a pearle with that is left; which, if it shed, and he cannot make stand on, by reason thers too much, he must drinke againe for his pennance.
Feeling the wax still sticking in his throat, [he] drank it off Supernaculum.
He is a man of no fashion that cannot drinke supernaculum.
Pledge the gentleman—Super naculum.
Cross References
Explanation
[To drink to the last drop.]
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.