mescal

• mezcal
• mexcal (rare)

From Mexican Spanish mezcal, from Nahuatl or Classical Nahuatl mexcalli (“intoxicating drink made from fermented agave juice”), perhaps from metl (“maguey (agave)”) + ixcalli (“stew”).

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

mescal (countable and uncountable, plural mescals)

1. A Mexican alcoholic drink distilled from the fermented juice of the agave.
   • 1947, Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, page 77:

     He thought: 900 pesos=100 bottles of whiskey=900 ditto tequila. Argal: one should drink neither tequila nor whiskey but mescal.

2. The peyote cactus.

• mescal bean
• mescaline

• Camels, Malecs, camels, macles, mascle, scamel

From Mexican Spanish mezcal, from Nahuatl or Classical Nahuatl mexcalli (“intoxicating drink made from fermented agave juice”), perhaps from metl (“maguey (agave)”) + ixcalli (“stew”).

• Rhymes: -al, -aw
• Hyphenation: mes‧cal

mescal m (plural mescais)

1. peyote; mescal (small, spineless cactus of Mexico and the southern United States)
2. mescal (Mexican alcoholic drink made from agave)

• peiote