Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A cordial made from wine and flavored with spices, formerly used as a medicine.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An old medicinal drink composed of wine with an infusion of spices and other ingredients, used as a cordial. Also hippocrass.
Wiktionary
- n. A cordial made of spiced wine, etc.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A cordial made of spiced wine, etc.
Etymologies
- From Old French ipocras, ypocras ("Hippocrates"), after Medieval Latin vinum Hippocraticum ("Hippocrates's wine") (because it was filtered through a Hippocrates sleeve). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English ipocras, from Old French ypocras, hypocras, from alteration of Hippocras, Hippocrates. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Eat this slice of marchpane, it will help your digestion; then shall you be presented with a cup of claret hippocras, which is right healthful and stomachal.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“Heyford, tell thy comely wife that I and Hastings will sup with her to-morrow, for her hippocras is a rare dainty.”
“Illustrations in medieval health handbooks often depict people buying spiced wine (hippocras), which being classed as drying and heating was considered a tasty and convenient remedy for a cool or wet affliction, or merely as a safeguard against the perils of the cold and wet winter: not unlike a vaccination.”
“To make hippocras: Take a gallon of claret of white wine, and put therein four ounces of ginger, an ounce and a half of nutmegs, of cloves one quarter, of sugar four pound; let all this stand together in a pot at least twelve hours, then take it, and put it into a clean bag made for the purpose, so that the wine may come with good leisure from the spices.”
“Every weekend the couple and their friends -- who call themselves the Gentsche Ghesellen, or Ghent companions -- sleep in windowless tent encampments where they build benches from branches, bake bread, sing religious tributes to the Virgin Mary and drink hippocras, a 14th-century wine drink spiced with ginger, cloves and pepper.”
“Lord Mountclere warmed from surface to centre as if he had drunk of hippocras, and, after holding her hand for some moments, raised it gently to his lips.”
“On special occasions, in the middle ages, after the dessert, hippocras was served, as they have liqueurs to this day on the Continent both after dinner and after the mid-day breakfast.”
“And I found them a lazy-person's hippocras recipe that can be made with locally-available spices.”
“Thither he caused to be brought store of mirobolans, cashou, green ginger preserved, with plenty of hippocras, and delicious wine.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“Which being done, they give him lampreys with hippocras sauce:”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hippocras’.
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Additional 250 Spelling Words
Words for the diehard intermediate and advanced spellers
facetiae, sagittary, anthophilous, hydromancy, pandect, carillonneur, tabbouleh, litterateur, windgall, pinguid, tressure, moderne and 238 more...
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phrontistery - h
from phrontistery.info
hysteresis, hyrax, hyoid, hymnody, hymnal, hylicism, hydric, hyalopterous, hyaloid, hyalography, hyaline, hyacinthine and 568 more...
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Notre Dame de Paris
From Notre Dame de Paris by good ole Victor Hugo. (Also called The Hunchback of Notre Dame.)
cuivres, diable, hawthorn, provost, epithalamium, affrighted, mendicants, vagrants, Styx, chimeras, coif, matagrabolise and 196 more...
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Madame Bovary
Some good words (chiefly French of origin, and often to do with the medical profession) encountered reading the Aveling translation -- mostly new to me, but a few words that are just worthy of bein...
tulle, argand, friable, corolla, lives of stir, difficile, rime, inveigh, feuilleton, peristyle, refulgence, wainscoting and 98 more...
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hagendas 2008
mise-en-scene, occultation, lodestone, obdurate, remontoire, filigree, insensate, carapace, vicissitude, verdigris, indivuation, intercalate and 224 more...
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Because I like Them: G --- H
gossypiboma, gymnophoria, ginglyform, goobermensch, gomeril, gump, grinagog, gorbelly, gound, hamesucken, hypobulic, humicubate and 93 more...
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Drinky~time, or That Most Happy of Hours
impairement! oh lugubrious libations of unenviable inebriation
all sorts, cock ale, soot-tea, stirrup-dram, steel-wine, aurum potable, burying-drink, ambergris, butler's ale, metheglin, morning purl, mum and 45 more...
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Libatious Lexemes
A list devoted to terms related to drinking; particularly alcohol.
reposado, armagnac, rhum agricole, tumbler, claret, medoc, muddler, tun, amontillado, amaro, chartreuse, calvados and 67 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hippocras.
ruzuzu One variation/mispronunciation is whippincrust. Jun 6, 2010
chained_bear "Red hippocras was made of claret, brandy, sugar, spices, almonds, and new milk."
—Sarah Hand Meacham, Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 11 Jun 6, 2010
missanthropist A beverage composed of wine, with spices ans sugar, strained through a cloth. It is said to have taken its name from Hippocrates' sleeve, the term apothecaries gave to a strainer. 'Ipocras" seems to have been a great favourite with our ancestors, being served up at every entertainment, public or private. it generally made a part of the last course, and was taken immediately after dinner with wafers of some other light biscuits.
According to Pegge, it was in use at St. John's College, Cambridge, as late as the eighteenth century, and brought in at Christmas at the close of dinner.
James Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 Feb 4, 2009