Liquid - liquor

The nouns liquid and liquor are in current English largely distinct, although they were not so in the past. This may, at least in part, be ascribed to the influence of American English, where liquor is defined by Merriam-Webster in definition a : as "a usually distilled rather than fermented alcoholic beverage", and the expression hard liquor means 'distilled alcoholic beverage, such as whisky (or whiskey), brandy and rum.

• Nowadays,
  • liquid is usually used for one of the 'three states of matter' in common-place physics (see further liquid), or some less scientific (sc. precise) equivalent.
  • liquor is commonly a liquid containing a high proportion (normally around 40%) of alcohol for human consumption.
• Formerly, liquor (which at any date is usually a non-count noun) could be one of several sorts of what we should now call 'liquids'. (OED lists the general meaning (a.) OF "A liquid; matter in a liquid state; ... a fluid" as "Obs[olete] in general sense"
  • "The liquid constituent of a secretion or the like; the liquid product of a chemical operation", sometimes used as the name of a chemical preparation in liquid form in the early stages of the development of that science
  • Hence various trades and craftsmen used liquor as the name of one of the liquids they needed in such trades as dying, tanning and printing of cloth
  • the water in which food has been boiled, perhaps used as stock, or the basis of a sauce, etc
  • paradoxically, in brewing liquor was the word used for 'water', an essential ingredient in the fermentation of malt, as the word 'water' was regarded as unlucky in that trade.

For a similar (and related) confusion, see Liquor - licker - liqueur.