[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
A loan translation from French la fée verte, the expression the green fairy designates absinthe.—The following definition of the noun absinthe is from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED – online edition, December 2025):
A highly alcoholic bitter aniseed-flavoured spirit, usually green in colour, traditionally distilled from wine flavoured with wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and other herbs, and served diluted with sugared water.
The OED adds the following note:
Absinthe was popular among French artists and intellectuals in the late 19th century, but was widely banned during the 20th century at the instigation of wine producers and temperance campaigners. This ban was usually linked to the alleged toxicity of wormwood (which contains small amounts of the neurotoxin thujone, found also in plants such as sage and tansy).
In the expression la fée verte (which alludes to the colour of absinthe), the noun fée seems to have originally referred to the potency of that spirit, which induces an altered state of consciousness—and not to one of a class of supernatural beings having human form.
Likewise, the French expression la fée brune (i.e., the brown fairy) designated opium, with allusion to the colour of that drug. For example, the expression la fée brune de l’opium occurred together with la fée verte de l’absinthe in Pathologie exotique, by Dr. F. Brunet, published in Le Bulletin médical (Paris, France) of Saturday 3rd January 1903 [page 316, column 2].
The earliest occurrence of the French expression la fée verte that I have found is from the column Çà et là, published in Le Nain jaune (Paris, France) of Saturday 1st October 1864 [page 3, column 1]:
Cet homme était un Sage !
On lui dit à trente ans, — c’était cet excellent Marchal de Calvi 1 : — « il faut renoncer à l’absinthe. »
Il divorça dès le soir avec la Fée verte.
translation:
This man was a Sage!
He was told at the age of thirty,—it was this excellent Marchal de Calvi 1:—“you must quit absinthe.”
He divorced the Green Fairy that very night.
1 Charles-Jacob Marchal (1815-1873) was a physician from Calvi in Corsica.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression the green fairy and variants that I have found:
1-: From The French Monks in the Channel Islands, published in The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, Western Counties, Monmouthshire, and South Wales Advertiser (Bristol, England) of Tuesday 7th February 1882 [page 3, column 2]—reprinted from the Court Journal:
The stomachic qualities of the liqueurs called Chartreuse 2 are well known. For more than a century a most powerful digestive, and is served with the coffee after dinner. It is called the “good yellow fairy” by the French ladies, to distinguish it from the “wicked green fairy,” the absinthe, which their husbands drink.
2 The noun Chartreuse designates a liqueur, of a pale apple-green colour, made by the monks of La Grande-Chartreuse (the head monastery of the Carthusians, near Grenoble), with aromatic herbs and brandy.
2-: From London Gossip, published in The Birmingham Daily Post (Birmingham, Warwickshire, England) of Friday 11th September 1885 [page 7, column 1]:
Absinthe is […] one of the curses, and not the least of all those inflicted on France by the great Napoleon. It was first introduced to the French army on its passage over Mount Saint Bernard. It was then sipped in small quantities only by the higher authorities of the army. Now the green-eyed fairy, as it is fondly called by the French soldier, is manufactured in immense quantities.
3-: From The Bolton Daily Chronicle (Bolton, Lancashire, England) of Tuesday 17th September 1889 [page 3, column 4]:
The grave and reverend signiors of the French Academy of Medicine are alarmed at the increasing number of absinthe-drinkers, and at their last meeting dissected the green-eyed fairy dear to Alfred de Musset 3. After studying the properties of the numerous essences which enter into its manufacture, they have come to the conclusion that it is not the essence of absinthe alone which causes drunkenness and various other evils, but the different plants that are added to this essence. The doctors think that the pernicious effects of absinthe-drinking can be lessened by modifying the composition of the liquor, and using wholesome herbs to counteract the effect of the dangerous ones. Bon; but absinthe-drinkers will probably ask whether this modification would not take away the particular flavour which gives the liquor its greatest charm.
3 Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) was a French Romantic poet and playwright.
