[Sca-cooks] mead

Gretchen Beck grm at andrew.cmu.edu
Wed Nov 3 14:52:00 PDT 2010



--On Wednesday, November 03, 2010 5:21 PM -0300 Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Gretchen Beck wrote that Oxford Dictionary says:
>> hydromel:
>>   A liquor consisting of a mixture of honey and water, which when
>>   fermented is called vinous hydromel or mead.
>
> It also states that mead's
> "Origin:
> Old English me(o)du, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch mee and German
> Met, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit madhu 'sweet drink,
> honey' and Greek methu 'wine'"
>
> Cassell's translates "aguamiel" as "honey water, nectar, mead must."
> BUT
> "mead" is translated as "aguamiel, hidromiel, meloja."
> I think we are splitting hairs here. Can "aguamiel" be called mead as it
> is not alcoholic?
>
> While we are at it what does "mead must" mean?
> Many thanks, I am really pondering on this.
> Suey

Mead must would probably be honey water either being set to ferment, or in 
the process of fermenting -- the final product, once the fermentation is 
done, being mead.

When I hear "mead", I always think the fermented honey drink -- that's 
always the meaning I've encountered in modern English. The OED tends to 
that definition as well.  The Middle English Dictionary adds "drink in 
general".

toodles, margaret 



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