Alcohols

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Compounds belonging to a category that contain hydroxyl groups attached to carbon atoms, which serve multiple purposes in industries like pharmaceuticals and beverages
2. Substances classified by the presence of one or more hydroxyl groups linked to carbon frameworks, utilized in creating drinks, disinfectants, and fuels
3. Chemical compounds characterized by one or more hydroxyl groups connected to carbon atoms, often used in manufacturing and as solvents

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "alcohols" is that the word for the intoxicating drink began as the name of a powder for the eyes. The root is Arabic "al-kuḥl", meaning kohl, the dark eye cosmetic, and in the Andalusian Arabic form "kuḥūl" it referred to stibnite, the antimony ore used to make it. Medieval Latin writers, transmitting Arabic medical and alchemical texts, rendered it as "alcohol", and it reached English in the 15th century as "alcofol". From there the meaning drifted. Through a Renaissance sense of any fine powder, it came to mean any fluid obtained by distillation, and by the 18th century it had narrowed to spirit of wine, or ethanol. The broad chemical sense arrived only after 1850, when chemists began applying the name to a whole family of compounds sharing a particular structure, so "alcohols" is the plural of that modern class.

Synonyms: spirits, liquors, ethanols