The word “booze” comes from:
A. An old Dutch word meaning “to drink too much”
B. An Arabic word for the apparatus that was the predecessor of an alembic still used for distillation
C. A medieval French term derived from the word boire, meaning “to drink”
D. The Anglicized common name for a goatskin wine container used by the ancient Greeks
A.
The word “booze,” once spelled “bouse,” comes from the medieval Dutch word büsen, meaning “to drink to excess.” Bouse dates back a thousand years to medieval English but was commonly used in the 16th century by unsavory characters—mostly thieves—before becoming part of general slang.