Friday, November 30, 2012

on whisk(e)y

I think my buddy Mike might appreciate Charles's recent post on Liminality, which begins as a narrative of what Charles and his wife did on a rare free Saturday, but morphs into an engrossing discourse on whisk(e)y.

ADDENDUM: Here's an interesting article on the "whiskey/whisky" spelling conundrum. The orthographic rule isn't simple, although the article does end with a simple (or quite possibly oversimplified) mnemonic.


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5 comments:

Charles said...

The spelling was something I struggled with myself, especially since OpenOffice Writer insisted on putting a red squiggly line under every instance of "whisky," and only relented in that one instance of "American whiskey."

Also, is it just me, or is there a grammatical mistake in the Hendrick's label? I typed it verbatim--take another look and tell me what you think.

As for the "engrossing discourse" itself, I suspect that our Maximum Leader will chuckle at my uninformed earnestness.

Kevin Kim said...

re: the Hendrick's label

Are you referring to this?

"The ‘unexpected’ infusion of cucumber and rose petals result in a most iconoclastic gin."

Then, yes: there's a subject-verb agreement error. The simple subject of the sentence is "infusion"; the verb should therefore be "results." Embarrassing, especially since it's from the Old Country. I'm reminded of Ralph Fiennes's awkward defense of English.

Kevin Kim said...

For what it's worth, I think you juggled the two spellings scrupulously.

Charles said...

Yup, that's the blunder I was referring to. I was very tempted to put a parenthetical comment on that in my entry, but then I thought it would be rather petty and left it out.

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going loopy.

Maven said...

I always thought if it were brewed/distilled in Scotland or Ireland, it was Whisky, and elsewhere Whiskey.

That all being said, while I was on vacation, I managed to indulge in a new love affair with Whisk(e)y Sours.