Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various strong alcoholic liquors of South Asia and Southeast Asia, usually distilled from fermented palm sap, rice, or molasses.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Originally the name of a strong liquor made in southern Asia from the fermented juice of the date, but used in many parts of Asia and eastern Africa for strong liquors of different kinds.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A name in the East Indies and the Indian islands for all ardent spirits. Arrack is often distilled from a fermented mixture of rice, molasses, and palm wine of the cocoanut tree or the date palm, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A name in the East Indies and the Indian islands for all ardent spirits often distilled from a fermented mixture of rice,
molasses , and palm wine.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any of various strong liquors distilled from the fermented sap of toddy palms or from fermented molasses
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Some small quantity of wine is made among them, which they call arrack, but is not common, being distilled from sugar, and the spicy rind of a tree, which they call _jagra_.
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During this banquet, the king, who sat aloft in a gallery about six feet from the ground, drank often to the general in the wine of the country, called arrack, which is made from rice, and is as strong as our brandy, a little of it being sufficient to set one to sleep.
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08 Robert Kerr 1784
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It's made with a sinister-looking black liquor called arrack
NPR Topics: News 2011
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It's made with a sinister-looking black liquor called arrack
NPR Topics: News 2010
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It's made with a sinister-looking black liquor called arrack
NPR Topics: News 2010
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They drink like fish, and manufacture a bad kind of arrack, the pernicious effects of which were experienced by the
Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries William Griffith
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Strong "arrack" [10] is brewed in large quantities from the gornuti palm, and the scene of debauchery that succeeds the first day of the feast is indescribable.
On the Equator Harry De Windt 1894
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After following the latter for a few miles to the west, we took a path through beautifully wooded plains, with scattered trees of the Mahowa (_Bassia latifolia_), resembling good oaks: the natives distil a kind of arrack from its fleshy flowers, which are also eaten raw.
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[Footnote 22: Most probably what we now call arrack is here meant.
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 08 Robert Kerr 1784
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'arrack' liquor sales in their villages that were turning their husbands into alcoholics and impoverishing them further?
India eNews 2009
chained_bear commented on the word arrack
"Rum or arrack, an alcohol distilled from the fermented sap of palm trees, was mixed with sugar, citrus juice, water, and spices to make punch."
—Sarah Hand Meacham, Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 11
June 7, 2010
bilby commented on the word arrack
I've also seen arack and arrak, as well as the original Indo-Malay arak.
June 7, 2010