Origin and history of brandy

brandy(n.)

"spirits distilled from other liquors" (especially wine), 1650s, abbreviation of brandy-wine (1620s) from Dutch brandewijn "burnt wine," earlier brand-wijn, so called because it is distilled (compare German cognate Branntwein and Czech palenka "brandy," from paliti "to burn"). The Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania, site of the 1777 Revolutionary War battle, supposedly was so named 17c. by the Dutch explorers for the color of its waters.

In familiar use abbreviated as brandy as early as 1657; but the fuller form was retained in official use (customs tariffs, acts of parliament, etc.) down to the end of 17th c., being latterly, as the spelling shows, regarded as a compound of brandy + wine. [OED]

also from 1650s

Entries linking to brandy

alcohol(n.)

1540s (early 15c. as alcofol), "fine powder produced by sublimation," from Medieval Latin alcohol "powdered ore of antimony," from Arabic al-kuhul "kohl," the fine metallic powder used to darken the eyelids, from kahala "to stain, paint." The al- is the Arabic definite article, "the."

Paracelsus (1493-1541) used the word to refer to a fine powder but also a volatile liquid. By 1670s it was being used in English for "any sublimated substance, the pure spirit of anything," including liquids.

The sense of "intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor" is attested by 1753, short for alcohol of wine, which then was extended to the intoxicating element in fermented liquors. The formerly preferred terms for the substance were rectified spirits or brandy.

In organic chemistry, the word was extended by 1808 to the class of compounds of the same type as this (a 1790 translation of Lavoisier's "Elements of Chemistry" has alkoholic gas for "the combination of alkohol with caloric").

*gwher-

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to heat, warm."

It might form all or part of: brand; brandish; brandy; brimstone; brindled; forceps; Fornax; fornicate; fornication; fornix; furnace; hypothermia; thermal; thermo-; Thermopylae; Thermos.

It might also be the source of: Sanskrit gharmah "heat;" Old Persian Garmapada-, name of the fourth month, corresponding to June/July, from garma- "heat;" Hittite war- "to burn;" Armenian jerm "warm;" Greek thermos "warm;" Latin formus "warm," fornax "oven;" Old Irish fogeir "heated;" Old English bærnan "to kindle."