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mez·cal

(mĕz-kăl)

A Mexican liquor distilled from a fermented mash of roasted agave hearts.

[Mexican Spanish mezcal, agave, liquor made from agave hearts, from Nahuatl mexcalli, cooked agave : metl, me-, agave (akin to Eudeve (Uto-Aztecan language of Sonora) meit and Tepehu´n (Uto-Aztecan language of Chihuahua) mai) + ixcalli, baked thing (ixca, to bake + -l-, passive suffix + -tli, unpossessed absolute singular noun suffix).]

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

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Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

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