Word Origins: Drink The Kool-Aid

No doubt you have heard the term “drink the Kool-Aid” which refers to cult like devotion to a cause. I dug deep down into my flash memory to remember this incident. The term originated after Jim Jones, the leader of a religious cult named the People’s Temple ordered his follower’s to commit suicide. In 1978, they had recently moved the Guyana. Jones made a grape drink laced with cyanide and sedatives and commanded his people to drink it. Those who did not drink were shot. A total of 914 people died including 276 children.

Although it was probably not Kool-Aid that Jones concocted, the phrase originated from this incident and Kool-Aid is the most probably brand of easy to mix drink.