Beekeeping

L’hydromel closes this list and is the one word on it that an English reader cannot guess, although the drink itself is familiar enough. The French word is Greek arithmetic: hydor, water, and meli, honey, joined into hydromeli and handed on by Latin. The name is the recipe — water and honey and nothing else. « Mead » says nothing of the kind. It comes down from Old English medu, a Germanic word for the fermented drink itself, and its relatives across the North Sea name the drink too, never its ingredients. The two words are therefore built on opposite principles: one describes a mixture, the other simply is the old name for the stuff. What lifts this above a curiosity is that English carries the other root as well, buried where nobody goes looking for honey. « Mellifluous » is mel flowing; the « molasses » on a kitchen shelf came through Portuguese from Late Latin mellaceum. Two honeys in one language, and the drink went to the Germanic one.