Moonshine is spirits distilled illegally, or foolish talk. A jar of moonshine, that is all moonshine.
It is dangerous as well as illegal, since a bad batch can leave people blind. The nonsense sense is older than the drink sense and is now the rarer of the two.
1nounmoonshineSpirits distilled illegally, or foolish talk.
“He kept a jar of moonshine that nobody was brave enough to try.”
moonshine is a drink.
Moon plus shine; illegal distilling was done at night, and the word first meant something insubstantial as moonlight.
Middle English
mone schyne
English, today
moonshine
From Middle English mone schyne, mone-schyne, moone shone; equivalent to moon + shine. Illegally distilled liquor is so named because its manufacture may be conducted without artificial light at night. The verb sense is a back-formation from moonshiner.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA