This party needs more eye shadow.
Word Wanderings – Alcohol
In ancient Arabic, the word kuhul was used to describe a fine powder used as eye shadow. Add al, Arabic for the to get al-kuhul. Or what we enjoy at happy hour, in its ethyl, or ethanol form.
Stay with me.
That powder Arabic ladies of antiquity used to darken their eyelids was made by distilling metal compounds. Alcohol made it into English in the 1670s, to mean pure spirit – anything distilled. By the 1750s it gained its tipple association, when alcohol of wine was used to describe brandy, or distilled wine.
Incidentally, that al- prefix is often a clue to the Arabic origin of other English words, like algebra, algorithm, alfalfa, alkaline, alchemy and alcove.
Of course, today alcohol describes a whole rainbow of chemicals – including methyl and isopropyl – the ones that might kill you if you drink them. Where’s the fun in that? Let’s just say we’re partial to ethanol.
Just wish they’d stop making us run our cars on it. That’s just a damned waste of ethanol.
=S
Word Wanderings is an occasional foray into etymology, the surprising and always fascinating history of words.
Image by Adina Voicu from Pixabay
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