Liberal Dictionary English Dictionary
noun
- See under cider.
noun
- the juice pressed from apples (or formerly from some other fruit) used for drinking, either before fermentation (sweet cider) or after fermentation (hard cider), or for making applejack, vinegar, etc.
noun
- Also called (US): hard cider an alcoholic drink made from the fermented juice of apples
- Also called: sweet cider US and Canadian an unfermented drink made from apple juice
noun
- US and Canadian fermented apple juiceCompare sweet cider
late 13c., from Old French cidre, cire “pear or apple cider” (12c., Modern French cidre), variant of cisdre, from Late Latin sicera, Vulgate rendition of Hebrew shekhar, a word used for any strong drink (translated in Old English as beor, taken untranslated in Septuagint Greek as sikera), related to Arabic sakar “strong drink,” sakira “was drunk.” Meaning gradually narrowed in English to mean exclusively “fermented drink made from apples,” though this sense also was in Old French.