vodka: [19] Vodka denotes etymologically ‘little water’. The word was borrowed at the beginning of the 19th century from Russian vodka, which is a diminutive form of voda ‘water’. And voda came from the same Indo-European source (*wedōr, *wodōr) as produced English water. The euphemistic application of the term water to distilled spirits is also responsible for eau de vie and whisky, both of which mean literally ‘water of life’. => water[vodka etymology, vodka origin, 英语词源]