vodka
Pluralvodkas
- 1A clear distilled spirit made from a fermented mash, usually of grain but sometimes of potatoes or other produce.
The bartender chilled the vodka thoroughly before serving it straight.
Traditional Russian vodka is distilled from rye or wheat.
Note
Behind the name is a diminutive. Russian vódka is built from vodá, "water," plus the suffix -ka, so it means roughly "little water." The older Russian name, xlébnoje vinó, "grain wine," described what the drink was made from instead. In English the word is usually a mass noun (a glass of vodka), but it also counts kinds, as in honey-flavored vodkas.
- 2A glass or measure of vodka served as a single drink.
The waiter set down a vodka and a bowl of olives.
After a long shift, she liked to nurse a slow vodka by the window.
- 3A neutral spirit that is distilled, or treated after distilling, so that it has no distinctive smell, flavor, color, or character.
Federal regulations require vodka to be free of any distinctive aroma and taste.
Producers filter the liquid repeatedly so the finished vodka carries no flavor of its own.
Note
A regulatory definition rather than a drinker's one. Under US standards of identity, what qualifies a spirit as vodka is the absence of character: no distinctive aroma, taste or color. That neutrality can come from distillation itself or from treatment afterward. The legal test says nothing about grain. It looks at neutrality, not at the raw material named in the everyday definition.
- 4The Russian language, as referred to in military, intelligence, or political slang.
Two analysts on the desk translated vodka all through the night.
He picked up enough vodka to follow the intercepted calls.
SimilarRussian
Note
The same slang turned on the language. Here the word is uncountable: someone speaks or translates vodka, never a vodka. That grammar is the quickest way to tell it from the slur for a person, which takes a plural. It is insider jargon of military and political work. Outside that circle, and anywhere it could sound like mockery, plain Russian is the word.
- 5A Russian, especially a Russian soldier, in military or political slang.
The patrol reported a single vodka watching them from the ridge.
Several vodkas had set up a checkpoint on the only road out.
SimilarRussian
Note
Soldiers' and politicians' slang that is also an ethnic slur, reducing a people to the liquor. It behaves as an ordinary countable noun, with a plural (vodkas) for groups. It belongs to hostile talk, so treat it as something to quote, not to use. In neutral writing the words are Russian or Russian soldier.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Russian во́дка (vódka), a diminutive of вода́ (vodá, "water"): so literally something like "little water." The older Russian name for the drink was "grain wine," and research suggests the present name grew from phrases about diluting the pure distilled spirit. It is related to English water and whisky.