john barleycorn

Questions about john barleycorn

What does john barleycorn mean?

john barleycorn means "an alcoholic beverage that is distilled rather than fermented".

What is another word for john barleycorn?

Close synonyms include liquor, spirits, booze, hard drink, hard liquor. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is john barleycorn a common word?

john barleycorn is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.