Booze first appeared in Middle Dutch as bĂ»sen, which meant 'to drink to excess.' There was also the Old High German word bausen, which meant 'to bulge or billow.'" It took 200 years for English speakers to start using it as both a verb (to booze) and a noun (give me some booze). It is a common misconception that the word was borrowed from a brand of whiskey sold by E.S. Booz in the 1800s, but the word much older. The 1529 Oxford dictionary defined it as “affected by drinking.”
Hooch
comes from Alaska. There was a native tribe there called the
Hoochinoo that distilled rum made primarily from molasses and
introduced it to soldiers from the lower 48.
Alcohol
began as an Arabic word describing a fine metallic powder used as
eye shadow (al-kuhul). The word was broadened to mean 'the pure
spirit of anything'. Later it was expanded to include a distilled
spirit or liquor. Alcoholic meaning 'caused by
drunkenness' is attested by the 1800s and meaning 'habitually
drunk' by 1910.
Liquor
dates back to at least 1200, likur
"any matter in a liquid state," and the Latin verb liquere,
meaning "to be fluid", from Latin liquorem.
The definition including a fermented or distilled drink followed
about a hundred years later. In North America, the term hard
liquor is used to distinguish distilled beverages from
undistilled ones and does not include beverages such as beer,
wine, and cider, which are fermented, but not distilled.
Spirits
refers to a distilled beverage that contains no added sugar and
has at least 20% alcohol by volume. It probably originated with
ancient alchemists, who referred to the vapor given off and
collected during an alchemical process (like the distillation of
alcohol) as the 'spirit' of the original material. Early European
Monks believed that the spirit was removed from the mash during
the distilling process.
Cocktail
refers to any beverage that contains two or more ingredients with
at least one of them being alcohol. When a cocktail contains only
a distilled spirit and a mixer, it is a highball. The Oxford English dictionary cites the word as originating in the
US. The first recorded use of the word cocktail as a beverage was
during the early 1800s. Of the many origins, two stand out: an old
French recipe for mixed wines, called a coquetel, brought to
America by General Lafayette’s soldiers in 1777; and New Orleans
brandy drink in an egg-cup called a coquetier in French. The
latter was a morning drink served at the time the tail of the
evening met with the morning cock-a-doodle-do of a rooster.
Bar
is an abbreviation of barrier, the counter that separates drinks
from the drinkers. Toward the end of the 16th century it expanded
to mean the building that housed the barrier. Barmaid
didn’t appear in print until the mid 1700s and bartender
arrived about fifty years later and barfly came about
during the early 1900s. Bottom line, beer, wine, cider, hooch,
and alcohol are booze, but only hooch, and alcohol are liquors.
Spirits are alcohol and both are liquor. All highballs are
cocktails, but not all cocktails are highballs.