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The colloquial compound beer-belly designates:
– a protruding belly caused by excessive beer drinking;
– a person (typically a man) who has a protruding belly caused by excessive beer drinking.
This compound was rare before the 19th century, and, in early use, beer-belly often translated compounds such as Dutch bierbuik and German Bierbauch, which designate a protruding belly, a habitual beer drinker.
The earliest occurrences of the compound beer-belly that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From The Glasse of Mans folly and meanes to amendment, for the health and wealth of soule and body (London: Printed by T. C. for I. H., 1615), by B. H. [page 5]:
Excesse of colde Frumenty fills men full of infirmitie. Gen. 19. Lot thereby committed lust and incest. It causeth Lethargie and sleeping, and quailes good qualities. Ierom. Venter mero aestuans spumat in libidinem: The belly inflamed with Wine, bursteth foorth to lust. Beere-belly is inflamed, but not ashamed; yet the woe of woes is pronounced.
2-: From Het groot Woorden-boeck, gestelt in’t Neder-duytsch ende in’t Engelsch. […] A large Netherdutch and English dictionarie (Rotterdam: Arnout Leers, 1648), by Henry Hexham (c. 1585-c. 1650):
een bier-buyck, ofte bier-buys, A Beere-belly, or a Gor-belly.
3-: From a translation of a passage from Deutschland, oder Briefe eines in Deutschland reisenden Deutschen (i.e., Germany, or Letters of a German travelling in Germany), by the German author Karl Julius Weber (1767-1832)—translation published in The Foreign Review, and Continental Miscellany (London, England) in 1829 [Vol. 4, No. 8, page 304]:
You may ever distinguish the national Bavarian by his nervous squat body, small round head, and beer-belly, immediately beneath which the trowsers begin; hence the braces or belt is indispensable.
4-: From History of the Life, Writings, & Doctrines of Luther (London: C. Dolman, 1854), a translation of Histoire de la vie, des écrits et des doctrines de Martin Luther, by the French historian Jean-Marie-Vincent Audin (1793-1851)—translation by the Scottish biographer William Barclay Turnbull (1811-1863) [Vol. 2, chapter 35, page 443]:
—the following is from “specimens of Luther’s pulpit eloquence”:
“We Germans are regular beer-bellies (Bierbäuche), jolly topers, ever feasting and drinking. To drink, in Germany, means not merely to drink after the manner of the Greeks, who made gods of their bellies, but to cram ourselves to the throat until we discharge all we have eaten and drunk.”
5-: From an account of the opening of Parliament, in London, England, published in the Springfield Daily Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts, USA) of Monday 4th March 1872 [page 4, column 6]:
The Right Hon Benjamin was in “good fettle,” as they say in Yorkshire, under the influence perchance of a telegram from Yorkshire, where his party has just gained a brand new member by the skin of his teeth. Beer did it. The beer venders and the beer bellies are undermining the clean 100 who follow “the people’s William” over the fall of purchase and the wreck of the Irish church.
6-: From an account of the 1873 World’s Fair, held in Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, published in the Arizona Citizen (Tucson, Arizona, USA) of Saturday 11th October 1873 [page 1, column 3]—Saratoga trunk designates a large travelling trunk with a rounded top:
The main building is one-half a mile in length, and in width about four hundred feet on the average, including transepts. The dome portion projects farther, and to give you a more suitable idea of the immense concern, I would recommend you to get the biggest Dutchman with the biggest belly to be had, and lay him on his back—feet in a southerly direction. Tuck his arms under, and turn his toes out—and you have a very good basis for a correct idea of the main hall, and as the center, or dome portion, is mostly occupied by Germany and Austria—the lager drinking nations—there is good reason for beginning this description every way with a Dutchman. With its rounding zinc roofs, the structure could be erected in miniature with a series of Saratoga trunks—excepting the dome. Nothing but an immense lager beer belly, on which set a half of a beer keg—topped out with a brass spittoon to represent the crown of Austria—will serve.
7-: From Local News, published in the Osborne County Farmer (Osborne, Kansas, USA) of Friday 27th July 1877 [page 5, column 2]:
There was an assault and battery case before Esq. Coates Wednesday. Robert Maxwell of Bloom township was arraigned for assaulting Henry Felderman. It seems the two were engaged in a little pleasantry, such as becomes neighbors, and were comparing and discussing the appearance and size of their respective belles [sic]. Maxwell told Felderman he had a lager beer belly and Felderman retorted that Maxwell had a “tea belly.” Just what a tea belly is we are unable to say, but Maxwell didn’t like to be called that, and so struck Feldermann [sic]. He plead [sic] guilty and was fined one dollar and costs, amounting in all to $29.
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