sh 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 "Traite Elementaire 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 "gaehren," "gaesen,"
"goeschen," 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, "gaescht"
and "gischt;" in Anglo-Saxon, "gest," "gist," and "yst," whence our
"yeast." Again, in Low German and in Anglo-Saxon, there is another
name for yeast, having the form "barm," or "beorm;" and, in the
Midland Counties, "barm" is the name by which yeast is still best
known. In High German, there is a third name for yeast, "hefe," which
is not represented in English, so far as I know.

All these words are said by philologers to be derived from roots
expressive of the intestine motion of a fermenting substance. Thus
"hefe" is derived from "heben," to raise; "barm" from "beren" or
"baeren," to bear up; "yeast," "yst," and "gist," have all to do with
seething and foam, with "yeasty waves," and "gusty" breezes.

The same reference to the swelling up of the fermenting substance is
seen in the Gallo-Latin terms "levure" and "leaven."

It is highly creditable to the ingenuity of our ancestors that the
peculiar property of fermented liquids, in virtue of which they "make
glad the heart of man," seems to have been known in the remotest
periods of which we have any record. All savages take to alcoholic
fluids as if they were to the manner born. Our Vedic forefathers
intoxicated themselves with the juice of the "soma;" Noah, by