It’s FINALLY the end of January which means many people (not me) will be jumping back on the alcohol wagon after a month off (I had a drink last night). So the word of the week is in honour of this fact.

The etymology of ‘booze’ is actually quite hard to find. Disappointingly it doesn’t come from the name of a 19th-century American distiller, E.C. Booz (some nice nominative determinism there for you, folks). It looks like it first appeared way back in the 14th century as ‘bouse’ (also how I spell it after a few shandies), which possibly came from the Dutch word ‘búsen’ which means to drink excessively.

Go forth and get hangovers, my friends.