alcohol

[16] Originally, alcohol was a powder, not a liquid. The word comes from Arabic alkuhul, literally ‘the kohl’ – that is, powdered antimony used as a cosmetic for darkening the eyelids. This was borrowed into English via French or medieval Latin, and retained this ‘powder’ meaning for some centuries (for instance, ‘They put between the eyelids and the eye a certain black powder made of a mineral brought from the kingdom of Fez, and called Alcohol’, George Sandys, Travels 1615). But a change was rapidly taking place: from specifically ‘antimony’, alcohol came to mean any substance obtained by sublimation, and hence ‘quintessence’. Alcohol of wine was thus the ‘quintessence of wine’, produced by distillation or rectification, and by the middle of the 18th century alcohol was being used on its own for the intoxicating ingredient in strong liquor. The more precise chemical definition (a compound with a hydroxyl group bound to a hydrocarbon group) developed in the 19th century. => KOHL

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   The word goes back, through Latin, to Arabic al-kuhl, literally 'the eye salve,' this being specifically a form of powdered antimony used in Arab countries as a cosmetic to darken the area round the eyes. (Hence kohl as the English word for this powder.) In the 16th century, alcohol was a term for a fine metallic powder obtained by purification. The term was later extended to liquids so obtained.