Whiskey, or whisky, denotes a broad category of spirits that are distilled from fermented grain mash and aged in wooden casks. Depending on the origin of the distiller, however, one spelling is preferred to the other. This presents the question: is the authoritative spelling whiskey or whisky?
Many linguist trace the etymology of the name to 14th Century Ireland. The word whiskey seems to have originated from a phonetic derivation of the Gaelic word for the same drink. The name in the Irish language is “uisce beatha” – pronounced “ishka baaha” - meaning water of life.
English soldiers stationed in Ireland from as early as the 14th Century were unsurprisingly quite taken with the whiskey drink and were keen to be able to order more of it. They found themselves unable to get to grips with the native tongue, so the word evolved into an anglicised form, “oo-isky”, and then finally to whiskey.
