Definitions

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

  • noun A brandy of Turkey and the Balkans, distilled from grapes or plums and flavored with anise.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A colorless aromatic spirituous liquor, prepared from grain-spirit, as in Greece, or from distilled grape-juice, as in the Levant.

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

  • noun A kind of ardent spirits used in southern Europe and the East, distilled from grape juice, grain, etc.

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

  • noun An Turkish liqueur flavored with anise.

Etymologies

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

[Turkish rakı, from Arabic ‘araq, arak; see arak.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Turkish rakı, from Arabic عرقي (ʿáraqi, "of liquor"), from عرق (ʿáraq, "arrack, arak"), literally, “condensate,” which refers to an ouzo-like liqueur made of raisins.

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Examples

Comments

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  • A strong Turkish liqueur made from anise and raisins.

    February 26, 2007

  • In Angora, Mustafa Kemal let it be printed in the newspaper that he would be holding a tea at Chankaya while in actuality he'd left for his headquarters in the field. With his mean, he drank the last raki he'd take until the battle was over.

    --Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002, Middlesex, p. 34-35

    August 6, 2008