“Elixicography”

The origin of distillation and the names with which we are now familiar is fascinating.

The discovery of the art of distillation was neither Greek nor Roman and there is no evidence of it in France before the 14^th century.

Although many nationalities claim to have invented distillation the smart money is on the Moors.  There is evidence of distillation in North Africa as far back as 900AD.  They used the distillate as an antiseptic rather than drinking it.  The moors called the liquid al-Kohl from whence we get the word alcohol.

Although China has a claim they probably learnt from the Moors and took the knowledge to Egypt where it was called al-Khem, from which we get the word alchemy.

Alcohol was revered for its property of preserving organic matter, giving it the name of water of immortality.  Translated into many languages this has given us many familiar names.   In Gaelic it became uisge beatha, dropping the second word it is now pronounced as simply whisky (Try saying Uisge out loud).  In French it is eau de vie, in Latin aqua vitae (aquavit) and in old Roman el lxr or Elixir.  In English we called it spiritual water but now just refer to spirits.