"ALCOHOL.--Chymicis est liquor aut pulvis summè subtilisatus,
vocabulo Orientalibus quoque, cum primis Habessinis,
familiari, quibus _cohol_ speciatim pulverem impalpabilem ex
antimonio pro oculis tin-gendis denotat ... Hodie autem, ob
analogiam, quivis pulvis teuerior, ut pulvis oculorum cancri
summe subtilisatus _alcohol_ audit, hand aliter ac spiritus
rectificatissimi _alcolisati_ dicuntur."

Similarly, Robert Boyle speaks of a fine powder as "alcohol;" and,
so late as the middle of the last century, the English lexicographer,
Nathan Bailey, defines "alcohol" as "the pure substance of anything
separated from the more gross, a very fine and impalpable powder, or a
very pure, well-rectified spirit." But, by the time of the publication
of Lavoisier's "Traité Élémentaire de Chimie," in 1789, the term
"alcohol," "alkohol," or "alkool" (for it is spelt in all three ways),
which Van Helmont had applied primarily to a fine powder, and
only secondarily to spirits of wine, had lost its primary meaning
altogether; and, from the end of the last century until now, it has,
I believe, been used exclusively as the denotation of spirits of wine,
and bodies chemically allied to that substance.

The process which gives rise to alcohol in a saccharine fluid is known
to us as "fermentation;" a term based upon the apparent boiling up or
"effervescence" of the fermenting liquid, and of Latin origin.

Our Teutonic cousins call the same process "gähren," "gäsen,"
"göschen," and "gischen;" but, oddly enough, we do not seem to have
retained their verb or their substantive denoting the action itself,
though we do use names identical with, or plainly derived from, theirs
for the scum and lees. These are called, in Low German, "gäscht"