{"id":806,"date":"2013-10-25T22:25:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T11:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/?p=806"},"modified":"2014-02-20T07:08:47","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T20:08:47","slug":"the-mysterious-names-of-alcohol-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/the-mysterious-names-of-alcohol-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Names of Alcohol, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous post I talked about the history of alcohol, and the words behind beer and wine. In this post, following on from that, I will talk about the alcohols of the spirit world; together we\u2019ll look at vodka, rum, whisky, and more, as we dissect the names, meanings and cultural influences.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s talk rum. Inspiring images of pirates swilling about on the ocean through storms while being attacked by giant squid, \u201cYo ho ho and a bottle of rum!\u201d ringing across the deck. Ah the life of a pirate. Rum\u2019s origins are rather groggy, it has a relative in the word \u2018rumbullion,\u2019 however this may only be the combination of the word \u2018rum\u2019
\nand \u2018boullion,\u2019 meaning \u201chot drink\u201d in French. Said by a Mr. N. Darnell Davis, \u201cIt came from the Barbados, where the planters first distilled it, somewhere between 1640 and 1645.\u201d He goes on to say: \u201cthe chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar-canes distilled, a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor.\u201d Other theories purpose the word derives from \u2018arom<\/b>a\u2019 or \u2018saccharum.<\/b>\u2019<\/p>\n

\"86696263\"<\/a>Let\u2019s turn our attention to Russia, where you can see a cat theater, and walk in the most polluted city in the world. Russia has a long history, much of which wouldn\u2019t be truly complete without the addition of vodka. Russia is the largest country in the world, and they like their water; no, not \u2018water\u2019 water, but vodka, which comes from the Russian word voda, <\/i>meaning \u2018water,\u2019 and -ka <\/i>being a diminutive suffix; therefore leaving us with \u201clittle water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our next destination is Ireland, where little green leprechauns hide pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and everyone is incredibly lucky; lucky because they have whisky. Of course whiskey is also rooted in Scottish culture, but I wanted to mention the leprechauns. Whiskey is a drink with\u00a0many relatives and varieties, some of which include barley, malted barley, rye,\u00a0malted rye, wheat or corn.\"whisky<\/a>\u00a0Using these you will find different styles including bourbon, rye, Tennessee, Scotch, Irish and Canadian. The word whiskey goes back to the Gaelic uisge beatha, \u2018water of life,\u2019 yes, another drink with a nod to water. Uisge beatha became usquebaugh in the 16th century, then whiskybae, and now whiskey. It should be noted that whiskey is to refer to Irish and American whiskies, while the Scotch variety is whisky, minus the \u2018e.\u2019<\/p>\n

Alright let\u2019s get the last few out of the way. Gin is derived from the French genievre, the Dutch jenever, and the Italian ginepro, these all translate to \u2018juniper,\u2019 which is the berry gin derives most of its flavor from. Brandy is derived from the Dutch brandewijn, \u2018burnt wine.\u2019 Lastly Tequila, one I simply couldn\u2019t exclude from the list, is simply named after the city in Mexico where it was first made.<\/p>\n

There we have it, our journey though the drinks has come to an end. What are your thoughts? Do you like or dislike any of the drinks mentioned? Do you know any other interesting ones that should be mentioned?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my previous post I talked about the history of alcohol, and the words behind beer and…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italian","category-russian"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}