Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. Irish & Scots Whiskey.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. whisky/whiskey
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A compound distilled spirit made in Ireland and Scotland; whisky.
- n. A liquor compounded of brandy, or other strong spirit, raisins, cinnamon and other spices.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Distilled spirit made by the Celtic people of the British Islands, originally from barley. In this sense the term is still used in Scotland for malt whisky.
Etymologies
Examples
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Some authorities consider that the word is derived from the first part of the term usquebaugh; others suppose it to be derived from the name of a place, the Basque provinces, where some such compound was concocted in the fourteenth century.
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Two hundred years later, the Catalan scholar Arnaud of Villanova dubbed the active principle of wine aqua vitae, the “water of life,” a term that lives on in Scandinavia (aquavit), in France (eau de vie), and in English: whisky is the anglicized version of the Gaelic for “water of life,” uisge beatha or usquebaugh, which is what Irish and Scots monks called their distilled barley beer.
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Which English word is a shortened form of "usquebaugh", which English borrowed from Gaelic, meaning "water of life"?
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The dinner ended with cheese and oatcake, accompanied by a few small glasses of "usquebaugh," capital whisky, five and twenty years old -- just Harry's age.
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While the old Professor was revived with copious draughts of "usquebaugh," Jack Blunt saw the flash below him, on the darkened seas, of a red light above a white one.
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"usquebaugh," capital whisky, five and twenty years old -- just Harry's age.
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"usquebaugh" is probably an anglicized phonetic rendering of the Irish Gaelic phrase "uisce beatha" -- which translates to "water of life".
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"I roll your word for liquor, usquebaugh, around my mouth", the speaker says reverently, before letting the whiskey drip down into a lustrous final couplet in which the last line is spun out beyond its natural length to extend the warmth of the moment: "You are distilled before you disappear forever/like the raised glass, the sunlight on one last golden measure."
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The word “whisky” is a shortened form of the Gaelic word usquebaugh, or “water of life,” i.e., aqua vitae.
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Old Keltie, the landlord, who had bestowed his name on a bridge in the neighbourhood of his quondam dwelling, received the carrier with his usual festive cordiality, and adjourned with him into the house, under pretence of important business, which, I believe, consisted in their emptying together a mutchkin stoup of usquebaugh.
mollusque commented on the word usquebaugh
See mollusque baugh.
April 16, 2011
fbharjo commented on the word usquebaugh
water of life (whiskey)
February 14, 2007