whisky
- 1Alternative form of whiskey, an alcoholic liquor distilled from fermented grain.
She sipped her whisky slowly by the fire while the rain came down.
Distilleries in the Highlands have produced whisky for centuries.
Note
The spelling used in Scotland, Canada and Australia, while whiskey is the form for the US, Ireland and England. Both come from Scottish Gaelic uisge-beatha, "water of life", a calque of Medieval Latin aqua vitae. The same phrase lies behind aquavit, eau de vie and the older borrowing usquebaugh. The plural changes y to ies (whiskies), and the word compounds easily, as in W. B. Maxwell's "weak whisky-and-water" of 1918.
- 2Alternative form of whiskey, in the sense of a light gig or carriage.
The young lawyer arrived at the manor in an elegant whisky drawn by a single bay horse.
He left the whisky at the inn's stable and went inside for supper.
Note
A carriage name with no link to the drink. It is whisk plus -y, and it shares a spelling with the distilled liquor only by coincidence. Charlotte Lennox, in The History of Sir George Warrington (1797), calls it a "one-horse chaise, or rather whisky" that was built in the lightest manner. The word now belongs to historical writing, so keep it for period vehicles rather than modern ones.
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Origins
It is a variant of usque, short for usquebaugh, from Scottish Gaelic uisge-beatha ("water of life"), which itself translates the Medieval Latin aqua vitae. The same source gives words like akvavit, aquavit, and eau de vie.
It was formed from whisk combined with the suffix -y.