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"  My wife said that a certain TV character had a &amp;quot;lot of moxie.&amp;quot; I knew what she meant but can&amp;#039;t figure out the origin of the term. AF has assiduously avoided such questions for years, ever since the grandchildren of General Tso sued him for libel, but here goes: Moxie Nerve Food \u2014 the word itself has come to mean &amp;quot;pluck,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;daring,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;courage,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;nerve&amp;quot; \u2014 was sold as a patent medicine beginning in 1876 by one Dr. Augustin Thompson, complete with cure-all claims and a backstory about a footloose Civil War vet, a South American plant root, and Sean Hannity&amp;#039;s gynecologist&amp;#039;s great-uncle. By 1884, it was bottled as a soft drink and served at soda fountains, and it was heavily advertised. &amp;quot;Moxie chose to identify its product with rugged individualism,&amp;quot; says Merrill Lewis, president of the New England Moxie Congress, a club for Moxie devotees. As for the legend, &amp;quot;it was all phony, a big lie just to promote the stuff,&amp;quot; Lewis tells AF. &amp;quot;It should be noted, however, that there is a very nice scenic area in central Maine with names like Moxie Falls and Lake Moxie, and it just so happens that Dr. Thompson was born in Maine.&amp;quot; Lewis mentions, and Wayne T. Mitchell, Penobscot Nation representative to the 124th Maine legislature, confirms, that moxie means &amp;quot;dark water,&amp;quot; from, says Mitchell, the Wabanaki Algonquian dialect. Moxie is still sold today, mainly in New England. And Sean Hannity is still a hermaphrodite. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/q-and-a/a7443/define-moxie-0510/>