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10 new beer words make it into the dictionary for the first time
A spike in online beer searches has resulted in 10 new beer-related words being added to dictionary.com this year.
More of us are getting our geek on when it comes to learning about different kinds of beer; a trend reflected in an uptick in online searches for terms from the brewing world. It’s hardly surprising when you consider that the craft beer market is forecast to grow by 14.1% CAGR between 2021 and 2026.
According to a report by Eat This Not That, the trend spotters at dictionary.com twigged that visitors were becoming more “beer curious” and looking for definitions that the site didn’t have in its system. So, to cater to a growing consumer thirst for beer knowledge, dictionary.com has added ten new beer-related words to its collection.
Some, such as ‘Pilsner’ and ‘Sour beer’, have become fairly mainstream terms. Others are on the more specialist side.
Included among the newly added words are ‘bock’; a strong, dark, malty beer which tends to have an alcohol content of more than 6%, and ‘dunkel’; a dark lager with a distinctive malt aroma – dunkel being the word for ‘dark’ in German.
Then there’s ‘gose’; a a sour wheat beer with a distinctive salty taste and coriander flavour and aroma; ‘hefeweizen’; a German-style malted wheat beer with a cloudy, pale appearance and fruit and clove taste; and ‘saison’; a Belgian-style beer with a dry, tart taste and high carbonation.
Ever heard of a ‘witebier’? Not to be confused with an ordinary ‘wheat beer’ (any beer brewed with a substantial amount of malted or raw wheat mixed with the more common barley malt), a witebier is a Belgian-style unmalted wheat beer with a hazy, pale appearance, spiced with coriander and orange peel.
If you really want to up your pub quiz merit or Wordle score, then dictionary.com also features the word ‘zymurgy’ , defined as “the branch of applied chemistry dealing with fermentation, the preparation of yeast, etc.”. Essentially, it’s a fancy word for the profession, hobby, or fellowship of brewing beer.