A fee or charge related to dram-shops (bars) or the consumption of strong alcohol, possibly a tax or cost.
From dram + -age suffix (collective noun, result, or fee), where -age comes from Old French and Latin -aticum, marking nouns of result or payment.
This is a ghost word—it appears in old documents but scholars aren't entirely sure what it meant, possibly a tax on alcohol or fees to dram-shop keepers. It's a reminder that English has thousands of extinct words we'll never fully understand.
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