spruce beer

English

Etymology

German Sprossenbier. Sprosse (“sprout, shoot”) was changed into spruce because the beer came from Prussia, or because it was made from the sprouts of the spruce.

Noun

spruce beer (countable and uncountable, plural spruce beers)

  1. (Canada, US) A kind of beer which is tinctured or flavoured with spruce, either by means of the extract or by decoction.
  2. (Canada, US) A spruce-flavoured soft drink.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for spruce beer in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

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