Hooch is a casual word for strong drink — the kind that burns going down. People use it most of all for alcohol made in secret, at home or in a shed, without permission from the law: rough whisky, not a bottle with a shop label. American speakers use it more than British ones, and it has an old, story-like feel. You meet it in war tales, crime films, and country talk. Friends say it; a school essay should not. Though actually, people also stretch it to any cheap, hard drink that knocks you out fast, even when nobody made it illegally at all. It is not a polite word on a menu, and it is not a word for beer or wine unless someone is joking.