"Wine, women, and song" is a hendiatris that endorses hedonistic lifestyles or behaviors. A more modern form of the idea is often expressed as "sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll", a phrase popularized by British singer Ian Dury in his song of the same title.

Linguistic variations

Similar tripartite mottoes have existed for a long time in many languages, for example: Not all hendiatris including women are positive: in instead suggest three dangers rather than pleasures, and offers the three essentials of quite another culture. Roman inscriptions mention, such as the ambivalent: balnea vina Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra se<t> vitam faciunt balnea vina Venus "Baths, wine, and sex corrupt our bodies, but baths, wine, and sex make life worth living." — epitaph of Tiberius Claudius Secundus The following poem mentions similar ideas, using four concepts rather than three: Omar Khayyam addressed the trio in 1120 in his Rubaiyat, verse XII. For him singing was replaced by a book, but he acknowledged its importance for others. Among rural Arabs in the days before Muhammed, free women "joined in the music of the family or tribal festivities with their instruments". It was a time of the "badawī Arab". A secular people then, for them "love, wine, gambling, hunting, the pleasure of song and romance ... wit and wisdom" were all important.

Possible origins

The Irish poet Edward Lysaght (1763–1810) used the phrase 'poetry and pistols, wine and women'. In 1816 the English poet John Keats composed a poem, 'Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff'. The English couplet "Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long" appears in print as early as 1837, translated from German verse attributed to Martin Luther. John Addington Symonds used the phrase "Wine, Women and Song" as the title for his 1884 book of translations of medieval Latin students' songs. The phrase in German is apparently older than in English. Symonds and the anonymous 1837 writer both provide the German text, attributing it to Luther. The attribution to Luther has been questioned, however, and the earliest known reference in German is to a folksong first printed in 1602. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations cites Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826) as a likely source, but any use by him would have to be a later use of the phrase. The waltz "Wine, Women and Song" (Wein, Weib und Gesang) is Op. 333 (1869) of Johann Strauss II. The lines Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, / Deutscher Wein, und deutscher Sang (German women, German loyalty, / German wine, and German song) are found in the second verse of Das Lied der Deutschen, the third verse of which is the German national anthem.

In popular culture