cider

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sider, also sidre, cidre and sither,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French sidre (“pear or apple cider”), earlier cisdre,^[4][5][6][7] now cidre.^[5][8] Merriam-Webster gives the Anglo-French forms sizre, ciser and cydre.^[9] The French word comes from Late Latin sīcera (“strong drink”), the word of the Vulgate,^[5][4][6] through a form with the consonants reversed,^[9][10] medieval cisera or cisara.^[3][6] The OED notes that it is not clear where or how the Latin form changed, and suggests a link through a form like Old Spanish sizra, now sidra, comparing ladre (“leprous”) from Lazarus.^[3][4] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek σίκερα (síkera), used in the Septuagint,^[3][8][11] from Biblical Hebrew שֵׁכָר (šēḵār, “strong drink, intoxicating liquor”),^[1][3][12] a derivative of a Hebrew verb meaning to drink deeply or become drunk,^[3][7][8] with relatives in Arabic, Aramaic and Akkadian words for drunkenness.^[8][5] The Old English translators had rendered the Hebrew word as Old English bēor, beer.^[5][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Strong liquor, in a biblical context: late 13th century in Etymonline;^[5] Barnhart dates sider to probably about 1280.^[4] The OED's first quotation, from William of Shoreham's poems of about 1315, already means a drink made from fruit.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

In French cidre had already come to mean a fermented drink made from apples before English borrowed it, and that was the ordinary English sense,^[3][12] although the drink could formerly be made from other fruit as well.^[3][6] The old meaning "strong drink" lived on in translations of the Vulgate and allusions to it,^[3][12] as when John Wyclif rendered Luke 1:15 as he schal not drynke wyn and sydir (1382);^[12][13] in such passages the word often kept forms closer to the Latin, such as ciser and sicer, which survived until the 17th century.^[3][12] Johnson (1755) still listed "all kind of strong liquors, except wine" first, but called that sense wholly obsolete.^[14] In the 19th century the word was applied to any pressed apple juice, fermented or not, and Americans distinguished sweet cider from hard cider;^[5] the OED records the North American non-alcoholic sense from 1846.^[3] In the West Country, from Worcestershire to Cornwall, dialect had many compounds, such as cider-cheese for the pressed pulp and cider-pound for the cider press.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1280 – sider, probably the first record.^[4]
• late 13th century – strong liquor, in a biblical context.^[5]
• c. 1315 – a fermented drink made from apples or other fruit.^[3][2]
• 1382 – the Wycliffite Bible uses it for the Vulgate's sicera, strong drink (this sense obsolete after 1497).^[3][12]
• 1755 – Johnson calls the sense "strong liquor" obsolete.^[14]
• 1846 – in North America, unfermented apple juice.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. An alcoholic drink made from the fermented juice of apples, called hard cider in the US: They drank a pint of dry cider at the village pub.^[16][9][3]
2. (US and Canada) A drink of unfermented apple juice, usually unfiltered, also called sweet cider.^[16][3][9]
3. (obsolete, 1382–1497) In biblical use, any strong drink.^[3][2][14]

Word family

• ciderish
• cider press
• cider vinegar
• hard cider
• sweet cider

Related words

• beer
• shicker

Usage notes

The spelling cyder is an older and chiefly British variant.^[16][11]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b c d e f Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
16. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins