Liquor = wine and/or beer?

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>... Lynne's example (and her first rule) strike me as idiosyncratic (as
>they would, e.g., the authors of the dictionary entry for LIQUOR in the one
>dictionary I consulted, the new AMERICAN HERITAGE, which tells us that LIQUOR
>is distilled, not merely fermented).

My recent Random House agrees: distilled only. The Cambridge on-line
dictionary agrees: distilled only. The new M-W on the Web says "usually"
distilled.

But the Web version of "Webster's Revised Unabridged" (1913) gives under
'liquor':

1. Any liquid substance, as water, milk, blood, sap, juice, or the like.

2. Specifically, alcoholic or spirituous fluid, either distilled or
fermented, as brandy, wine, whisky, beer, etc.

And the OED also gives a broad definition, explicitly including wine, beer,
etc. Apparently the broader definition has been falling out of use.

Since many of the laws regarding liquor sales etc. come from a time closer
to 1913 than to 2000, I think perhaps the current context should permit the
broad sense, at least as one possibility.

Isn't there a sort of strong beer marketed under the designation "malt
liquor"? I think there are Colt 45, Mickey's, various other brands.

The use of 'drinking' to refer only to 'hard liquor' -- or even only to
large quantities thereof -- is not unusual. To take an extreme example,
most would not object to "I don't drink at all. I go to church, and I take
wine at Communion. When I get a cough, I take cough syrup which contains
some alcohol." Arguable but very common are things like "I don't drink. Of
course I might have wine or beer at dinner." Very dubious in my opinion,
but still not rare: "I don't drink. But I have a six-pack of beer every
evening." [Of course "drinking" here is being treated as a sort of sport or
hobby ... Similarly if asked "Do you run?" I would say no (since this is
not one of my pastimes), even though I might have run a few steps recently,
playing with the kids or crossing a busy street.]

-- Doug Wilson
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