18-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- South China Morning Post
How whisky took its name from the Gaelic ‘water of life' and what drinking it neat means
Around the world, aficionados may sip on a wee dram, ask for a Scotch on the rocks, or grab a ハイボール haibōru, Japanese for 'highball', even in a can from a kombini (Japanese convenience store).
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This spirituous liquor, originally distilled in Ireland and Scotland from malted barley – with or without unmalted barley or other cereals – is, of course, whisky, or whiskey, the latter the spelling common in Ireland and the United States.
Whisky is a clipped version of whiskybae, which is a borrowing from Gaelic uisge beatha – literally 'water of life'. Old Irish uisce 'water' traces back to the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *wed- meaning 'water, wet', plus bethu meaning 'life', from a suffixed form of PIE root *gwei- 'to live'.
The earliest appearance in English of the word is in 1715, in A Book of Scottish Pasquils 1568 to 1715, a collection of satirical poems, songs, and sayings from Scotland, in what seems an apt description of the drink: 'Whiskie shall put our brains in rage'.
A Scotch whisky distillery. Photo: Port Ellen
The use of distillation, and the term for such 'water of life', however, both date much further back.
