Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A fermented alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and flavored with hops.
  • noun A fermented beverage brewed by traditional methods that is then dealcoholized so that the finished product contains no more than 0.5 percent alcohol.
  • noun A carbonated beverage produced by a method in which the fermentation process is either circumvented or altered, resulting in a finished product having an alcohol content of no more than 0.01 percent.
  • noun A beverage made from extracts of roots and plants.
  • noun A serving of one of these beverages.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To drink beer; tipple.
  • noun An obsolete form of bear.
  • noun Obsolete present and preterit of bear
  • noun An alcoholic liquor made from any farinaceous grain, but generally from barley, which is first malted and ground, and its fermentable substance extracted by hot water.
  • noun A fermented extract of the roots and other parts or products of various plants, as ginger, spruce, molasses, beet, etc.
  • noun A mole or pier.
  • noun An obsolete form of bier.
  • noun One who is or exists.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A fermented liquor made from any malted grain, but commonly from barley malt, with hops or some other substance to impart a bitter flavor.
  • noun A fermented extract of the roots and other parts of various plants, as spruce, ginger, sassafras, etc.
  • noun fig. insignificant matters.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who is or exists.
  • noun uncountable An alcoholic drink fermented from starch material commonly barley malt, often with hops or some other substance to impart a bitter flavor.
  • noun uncountable A fermented extract of the roots and other parts of various plants, as spruce, ginger, sassafras, etc.
  • noun uncountable A solution produced by steeping plant materials in water or another fluid.
  • noun countable A glass, bottle, or can of any of the above beverages.
  • noun countable A variety of the above beverages.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a general name for alcoholic beverages made by fermenting a cereal (or mixture of cereals) flavored with hops

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English ber, from Old English bēor, from West Germanic, probably from Latin bibere, to drink; see pō(i)- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English beere, equivalent to be +‎ -er.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English bere, from Old English bēor ("beer"), from Proto-Germanic *beuzan, *beuzaz (“beer”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰews-, *bews- (“dross, sediment, brewer's yeast”). Cognate with West Frisian bier ("beer"), Low German Beer ("beer"), Dutch bier ("beer"), German Bier ("beer"), Icelandic bjór ("beer"), Swedish buska ("freshly brewed beer, new beer"), Middle Dutch & Middle Low German būsen ("to feast, booze, drink heavily"), Middle High German būs ("a swelling"). Non-Germanic cognates include probably Albanian mbush ("to fill, stuff"). More at booze.

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Examples

Comments

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  • A coastal village in Devon, England.

    "Down in Devon, down in Devon,

    There's a village by the sea,

    It's a little piece of heaven

    And the angels call it Beer!"

    - from www.beer-devon.co.uk/

    The sad news is that in the Beer Congregational Church it's only God being worshipped.

    January 2, 2008

  • "In the late 18th century and early 19th century, smuggling provided many citizens of Beer with an income on both sides of the law. According to George Pulman in 'The Book of the Axe', published in 1875, 'In former days, when the coastguard was inefficient and the exciseman lax, the Beer men were the very kings of smugglers.'

    Beer fishermen had always had a fine reputation for their ability to handle and sail boats. With this ability and the ideal geographical location for landing contraband and transportation to remote farms and houses, smuggling became an alternative "trade" for some of the fishermen. By 1750, the area was so notorious that the local revenue officers were reinforced by dragoons posted in Beer, Branscombe and Seaton.

    The boats used were Beer luggers, built in Beer, between 25ft to 35ft in length. They usually had a 4 man crew. Much of the contraband was brought in from the Channel Island of Alderney, but in some cases the smugglers would collect contraband from the North coast of France. As well as casks of brandy, tea, tobacco and silk were other commodities that were smuggled into Beer.

    Not all of the inhabitants of Beer were smugglers, indeed some worked for the authorities to catch the smugglers. This could prove complicated and there are reported instances of coastguards being bribed to turn a blind eye at the appropriate time. The honest citizens could also make money from smuggling by informing on the smugglers or by retrieving the contraband. Revenue Cutter captains were rewarded for the contraband once it was handed over to the authorities and sold.

    If a smuggler was being chased by a Revenue Cutter or had received a signal from shore, usually a fire, that coastguards were about, then the casks could be roped together in a raft and sunk offshore and its position marked by a float for later retrieval by 'creeping', fishing up the tubs using grappling hooks. In the event that the smuggler did not have time to sink a raft, then the kegs could be thrown overboard. To secure a conviction, the Cutter required both the smuggler and the contraband, so by separating himself from the contraband increased the smuggler's chances of escape, especially as the contraband could be of financial benefit to the Revenue Cutter captain. Revenue cutter crews would also 'creep' for contraband if they thought they knew where a raft of kegs had been sunk."

    - from www.beer-devon.co.uk/

    January 2, 2008

  • erin: Clay, do you want some tea?

    clay: Only if it has beer in it.

    --1/21/08

    January 22, 2008

  • '"There's this car, that runs on water, man. Th reason the government doesn't want us to know about it is cause they know we'll buy all the water, and there'll be nothing left to drink, except BEER. And they know that beer, will set us free."' -That 70's Show

    February 18, 2008

  • In Heaven there is no beer (No beer?!)

    That's why we drink it here

    And when we're all gone from here

    Our friends will be drinking all the beer.

    (Brave Combo)

    April 25, 2008

  • Moonshiner's term for the liquid part of fermented mash. "Beer", also called teedum, was often made for its own sake rather than for distilling.

    August 26, 2009

  • "'My easy description of the beer is it's a beer-flavored beer,' said Leonard."

    - Norman Miller, Can it on the critique, milforddailynews.com, 24 Nov 2009.

    This from a brewer!

    November 26, 2009

  • "Inns also provided a really radical change of taste for the nation, as ale faced competition from the hops first imported from Flanders from 1525. Andrew Boorde was sceptical about adding hops to the mash to make beer, considering it an unnatural drin, but it caught on so fast that by the time Hentzner visited in 1598 beer had become 'the general drink ... excellently well tasted, but strong and what soon fuddles'. The bitter antiseptic resins of the hops acted as preservatives so that now the brew could be kept for up to two years, strengthening as time passed. It could be made in commercial quantities and ordered by potency: March and October beer were the strongest, while weak 'small beer' was drunk for breakfast as well as by children. So pervasive was beer's influence that when hop crops failed, brewers resorted to broom or bay berries to achieve the same aromatic and bitter qualities."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 100

    January 9, 2017