www.alphadictionary.com

I'm in the middle of a British mystery, and a lot of the action takes place in a pub. The writer keeps saying the bartender fills the tankard or whatever from "the optic." In context the optic appears to be the handle or lever on the spigot that you press or pull to fill the glass. I can find no record of this use in any of the several dictionaries I use. Can anyone help? Is this a British isage?

As it's meant for shot drinks, I'm not sure how it would work for draft items, but here's what I got from dictionary.com:

(Brit) trademark a device attached to an inverted bottle for dispensing measured quantities of liquid, such as whisky, gin, etc.

Perhaps our cisatlantic co-Agorans can be of more help.

I'm not sure about filling a tankard, it's generally for liquor, a device for rapidly measuring a set amount, often 35ml or 25ml, attached to an inverted bottle.



I guess the optic bit comes from the visual of observing the chamber filling up with liquid, the customer can see they are not being short changed. Are these called something else stateside?