Meaning

noun an illicitly distilled (and usually inferior) alcoholic liquor

originAbbreviation of hoochinoo, name of a specific liquor, from Tlingit Xutsnoowú Ḵwáan, the group that produced it, from Hutsnuwu (“grizzly bear fort”), the name of the village on Admiralty Island in which they lived. From Tlingit xóots (“grizzly bear”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0