spiritus frumenti
From The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails
is apothecary’s Latin for “spirit of grain.” In nineteenth-century America, it was used in dispensary books to indicate whisky. It would have remained an obscure term were it not for Prohibition, when the only way to get whisky legally was by prescription. Spiritus frumenti was the term physicians used when writing their prescriptions, and—to make sure there was no error in the process—several of the available brands of medicinal whisky incorporated it into their labeling.
By: David Wondrich
This definition is from The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, edited by David Wondrich (Editor-in-Chief) and Noah Rothbaum (Associate Editor).