Moxie

[mok-see] /ˈmɒk si/

noun, Slang.
1.
vigor; verve; pep.
2.
courage and aggressiveness; nerve.
3.
skill; know-how.
/ˈmɒksɪ/
noun
1.
(US & Canadian, slang) courage, nerve, or vigour
n.

“courage,” 1930, from Moxie, brand name of a bitter, non-alcoholic drink, 1885, perhaps as far back as 1876 as the name of a patent medicine advertised to “build up your nerve;” despite legendary origin stories put out by the company that made it, it is perhaps ultimately from a New England Indian word (it figures in river and lake names in Maine, where it is apparently from Abenaki and means “dark water”). Much-imitated in its day; in 1917 the Moxie Company won an infringement suit against a competitor’s beverage marketed as “Proxie.”

noun

[1908+; the semantic history is not entirely clear; best known fr the advertising slogan ”What this country needs is plenty of Moxie,” used for a brand of soft drink registered in 1924; but other Moxie drinks preexisted this: a patent ”nerve medicine” of the same name was marketed in 1876; the name may be based on a New England Indian term found in several Maine place names and perhaps in the name of a plant, moxie-berry]

language, music
A language for real-time computer music synthesis, written in XPL.
[“Moxie: A Language for Computer Music Performance”, D. Collinge, Proc Intl Computer Music Conf, Computer Music Assoc 1984, pp.217-220].
(1994-12-05)