bourbon

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A serving of bourbon whiskey.

   It concerns the gnomelike quality of the average American at a party. I have been to many parties where staid American business men have been transformed by a few ryes or bourbons into unpredictable gremlins out for adventure.

2. 2
   name

   A Bourbon Democrat.

   It was "a fundamental impossibility" for a black person to be a Bourbon, white-supremacist Democrat, but a black individual could very well become a "progressive Democrat."

3. 3
   noun

   whiskey distilled from a mash of corn and malt and rye and aged in charred oak barrels

4. 4
   noun

   A whiskey distilled in the United States from a mixture of grains in which at least 51% is corn, aged in charred, new oak barrels.

5. 5
   noun

   A Bourbon biscuit.

6. 6
   name

   A European dynasty which reigns in Spain and formerly ruled the Kingdom of France.

7. 7
   name

   A surname from French.

8. 8
   name

   A county in Kentucky, see Bourbon County.

Etymology

The French Bourbon dynasty is named for the lordship of Bourbon l'Archambault. The town's name derives from Gaulish Borvo, a local Celtic deity associated with hot springs, from Proto-Celtic *borvo (“froth, foam”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewh₁- (“to be hot, boil”). Compare brew and fervent. The subsidiary senses derive from the dynasty's name.