Whiskey
An alcoholic liquor distilled from grain, such as corn, rye, or barley, and containing approximately 40 to 50 percent ethyl alcohol by volume.
Many connoisseurs of fine whiskey wouldn't dream of contaminating their libations with water, but they really can't avoid it. Not only is water used in distilling whiskey, but the words whiskey and water share a common Indo-European root, *wed–, “water, wet.”
This root could appear in several guises, as *wed–, *wod–, or *ud–. Water is a native English word that goes back by way of prehistoric Common Germanic *watar to the Indo-European suffixed form *wod-or, with an o. Whiskey is a shortened form of usquebaugh, which English borrowed from Irish Gaelic uisce beatha and Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha. This compound descends from Old Irish uisce, “water,” and bethad, “of life,” and meaning literally “water of life.” (It thus meant the same thing as the name of another drink, aquavit, which comes from Latin aqua vitae, “water of life.”) Uisce comes from the Indo-European suffixed form *ud-skio–.
|