Hey, Bartender

We live in a time of rampant title inflation. Football teams go into a season with more "vice presidents" than offensive linemen. Presidential advisers are now "czars" (an anachronism worrisome on all kinds of levels). Jobbers who haven't won a professional wrestling match in years are "superstars," and models who make a living at it are "supermodels."

Perhaps no example manages to combine silliness with pretension quite so successfully as "mixologist." Maybe it's just the earnestness with which that solecistic neology^* is used, but I firmly assert that anyone who, faced with a self-described mixologist, orders anything but a rum and coke has a heart of stone.

That said, "mixologist" is by no means the worst conceivable possibility. Here, in no particular order, are ten even more pretentious job titles a bartender could use:

1. Spiritual Director.
2. Cocktail Architect.
3. Alcoholichemical Engineer.
4. Chef de Liqueur.
5. DDS (Doctor of Drink Science).
6. Spirits guide.
7. Ye Olde Apothecary of Alcohol.
8. Bittürsmeister.
9. Cocktail Whisperer.
10. Mignologist --

which, by deriving both suffix and prefix from the Greek, may be as pretentious as it can get.

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* Yeah, I said "solecistic neology." You want to match pretentions with me, you better bring your A game.