Other forms: alcohols
Alcohol is the substance in wine and beer that makes people drunk. Drink alcohol, alcohol content, give up alcohol.
In chemistry it is a whole family of compounds and the drinkable one is ethanol; the rest are poisonous. It is a depressant rather than a stimulant, which surprises people. Note that the word came through Arabic from al-kuhl, a fine powder used as eye make-up, by way of the idea of a refined essence.
1nounalcoholThe intoxicating substance in wine and beer.
“He doesn't drink alcohol, so he ordered an orange juice.”
alcohol is a substance.
Arabic al-kuhl named a fine powder used as eye make-up. The sense moved through distilled essence to the drinkable spirit.
Medieval Latin
alcohol
Middle English
alcofol
English, today
alcohol
From Middle English alcofol, from Medieval Latin alcohol. 15th century from Middle English alcofol, from Middle French alcohol or Spanish alcohol, derived from the Medieval Latin - rendering alcohol transmitted in medical or alchemical literature of Arabic كحل (“kohl”), which in xaa - also bore the form كُحُول, قُحُول; bearing thus the meaning of stibnite first, then generalized in meaning to a powder obtained by triturating a material, then also to liquids obtained by boiling down, and specialized to mean spirit of wine, ethanol, in the 18th century, then the narrow chemical sense after 1850. a doublet of alcool and kohl. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA