arak
- 1A clear, unsweetened alcoholic drink flavored with aniseed, made and drunk mainly in the Levant.
Every fall the villagers distill their own arak after the grape harvest.
The restaurant served chilled arak alongside a long table of mezze.
Note
Behind the name is the Arabic word for "sweat", a picture of the drops that gather as the spirit condenses in the still. Raki, rakija and ara come from that same Arabic word, which is why Lebanon's arak and Turkey's raki sound so alike. Like most spirits it is usually uncountable, as in a glass of arak, with the plural araks for more than one kind.
- 2Alternative spelling of arrack, an alcoholic drink distilled from coconut palm flowers or sugar cane.
The shop in Colombo stocked several brands of arak distilled from the flowers of the coconut palm.
The bartender added a splash of Indonesian arak, made from sugar cane and red rice, to the punch.
Note
Two spirits trade spellings here. Arrack is the main spelling for the palm-flower drink of South Asia and the sugar-cane and red-rice drink of Indonesia, while arak is the main spelling for the aniseed drink of the Levant. Each spelling also turns up for the other drink, so the spelling alone will not tell you which is meant; what it is distilled from will.
- 3The toothbrush tree (Salvadora persica), whose twigs are used to clean and polish the teeth.
Twigs of arak, frayed at one end, served the travelers as toothbrushes.
The market stall sold bundles of arak sticks for cleaning teeth.
Note
A separate word from the aniseed spirit that only looks the same in English: this one was borrowed from a different Arabic word, arāk. Its twigs are what earned the plant its English name, the toothbrush tree, and the wood itself is arak-wood. In Gibb and Beckingham's translation of The Travels of Ibn Battutah, people polish their teeth with twigs of green arak-wood.
Practice
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Origins
From Arabic عَرَق (ʕaraq, “sweat”), a reference to the liquid that condenses during distillation. It is a doublet of ara, raki, and rakija.
From Arabic أَرَاك (ʔarāk).