hippocras

American  

[hip-uh-kras] / ˈhɪp əˌkræs /

noun

1. an old medicinal cordial made of wine mixed with spices.

---

hippocras British  

/ ˈhɪpəʊˌkræs /

noun

1. an old English drink of wine flavoured with spices

---

Etymology

Origin of hippocras

1325–75; Middle English ypocras, apparently short for ypocras wyn (translation of Medieval Latin vīnum hippocraticum; so called because clarified by filtering through a strainer named after Hippocrates); Middle English ypocras < Old French: Hippocrates < Medieval Latin Hippocrās, alteration of Latin Hippocratēs, on model of words like cīvitās (nominative), cīvitātis (genitive)

Example Sentences

The ancient Greek version of mulled wine, Ypocras or Hippocras, takes its name from Hippocrates, the Greek physician regarded as the father of medicine.

From Salon

According to several medieval cookbooks the most common of the sweet, spiced wines in the late middle-ages were still referred to as hippocras, with the term "mulled wine" coming later.

From Salon

Ford continues his historical timeline by going into the Renaissance period when “Europeans enjoyed a variety of aromatized, fortified and sweetened wines first called Mulsum, which was liberally flavored with myrrh, then Conditum, which first introduced the idea of changing aromatized wines based on what was in season, then Hippocras, which was wine infused with sugar, cinnamon, ginger, grains of paradise and turnsole.”

From Forbes

It might throw in some trivia—that when Keats dreamed of the “true, the blushful Hippocrene,/ with beaded bubbles winking at the brim,” he may have been alluding to hippocras, one of sangria’s ancestors; that Jane Austen’s heroines drank a version of sangria at their dance parties; that sangria might have arrived in the United States with the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

From Slate

HIPPOCRAS, an old medicinal drink or cordial, made of wine mixed with spices—such as cinnamon, ginger and sugar—and strained through woollen cloths.

From Project Gutenberg