Bourbon

How to spell bourbon

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bourbon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bourbon mean?

1. nounAn American whiskey distilled mainly from corn and aged in charred oak barrels.
2. nounA rectangular chocolate-flavoured sandwich biscuit with a chocolate cream filling, popular in Britain.

Bourbon in a sentence

• He poured a measure of bourbon over a single cube of ice.

• He dunked a chocolate bourbon into his afternoon tea.

• The distillery in Kentucky ages its bourbon for at least four years.

• The office tin held nothing but a single broken bourbon.

Where does bourbon come from?

Language of origin: French

Bourbon takes its name from the French royal House of Bourbon, whose name comes in turn from the small town of Bourbon-l'Archambault in central France. That place name is thought to derive from Borvo (also spelled Bormo), a Celtic god associated with the bubbling hot springs there, so the word's distant root literally evokes boiling or bubbling water. French settlers carried the dynastic name to North America, where Bourbon County in Kentucky was named in 1785 in gratitude to the French crown for its help during the American Revolution. The corn-based whiskey distilled in that region took the county's name during the early 1800s, and the spelling kept its French shape, which is why English speakers must remember the silent inner vowel pattern 'our'. The chocolate biscuit, launched in Britain in 1910, borrowed the same prestigious-sounding name. The tricky 'ou' followed by 'on' (not the expected 'er' or 'an' sound) is the main spelling trap and is a direct inheritance from the French original.

How the word is built

• From the place name Bourbon (Bourbon County, Kentucky), itself from the French House of Bourbon; treated in English as a simple noun with no productive affixes.