Also 8 taffia, taffey, -fy. [Origin uncertain: given in 1722 as native name in West Indies (Labat, Voy. aux Iles de l’Amér., III. 410 L’eau-de-vie qu’on tire des cannes est appelée guildive [see KILL-DEVIL]; les sauvages et les nègres l’appellent tafia): but tāfīa is also given in Malay dicts. as ‘a spirit distilled from molasses.’ The word appears therefore to be widely diffused in east and west.] A rum-like spirituous liquor obtained from the lower grades of molasses, refuse brown sugar, etc.
1777 (April 10). in Illinois Hist. Collect. (1903), I. 296. The person that intoxicated them with Rum or Taffia.
1779. in W. H. English, Conq. Northwest (1896), I. 375. 71/2 gallons of taffey at sixty-four dollars per gallon.
1779. G. R. Clark, Campaign Illinois (1869), 79. I … gave them … Taffy and Provisions to make merry on and left them.
1793. Trapp, trans. Rochon’s Madagascar, 189. Over which he poured some tafia or rum.
1799. Naval Chron., I. 173. A sloop laden with taffia.
1880. G. W. Cable, Grandissimes, xxviii. 197. From the same sugar-cane comes sirop and tafia.
1889. Harper’s Mag., Nov., 851. Sugar is very difficult to ship; rum and tafia can be handled with less risk.
1900. C. Mackenzie, Notes on Haiti, 42. Little or no sugar is made any where, at least for exportation, as I shall hereafter prove; the juice of the cane being almost invariably only reduced to the state of syrup, and used in that state for domestic purposes, or distilled into tafia, of which there is a very large consumption, being the favourite liquor of the natives.
1916. Scroggs, Rural Life in Miss., 1803, 274. Various kinds of refreshments might be served, ranging from gumbo to tafia diluted with water.
