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/əˈɹæk/ · noun
A clear, unsweetened aniseed-flavoured alcoholic drink, produced and consumed primarily in the Levant..
A rite of the grape harvest in the Christian villages dotting the Lebanon mountain range[…] is the perfectly legal distillation of homemade arak. This smooth, cool, refreshing liquor, tasting of licorice with a soupçon of peppermint, remains the staple drink at Sunday lunch, an eat-till-you-drop extravaganza of small meze dishes.
In Lebanon they have arak, in Turkey raki, and they even make something similar in Saudi Arabia. This is not so surprising as the Arabs were probably the first people to distil alcohol; alcohol is an Arabic word. “Arak” means “sweat” in Arabic, and describes the distillation process rather than what happens when you drink too much.
My wife is Jordanian and has family who have lived and worked in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for years. During our time in the U.A.E., we ate with them, drank arak, watched them dance the dabke late into the evening.
They use perfume freely, paint their eyes with kohl, and are constantly polishing their teeth with twigs of green arak-wood.
Use arak when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Arak means A clear, unsweetened aniseed-flavoured alcoholic drink, produced and consumed primarily in the Levant..
Common synonyms include arrack.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
A rite of the grape harvest in the Christian villages dotting the Lebanon mountain range[…] is the perfectly legal distillation of homemade arak. This smooth, cool, refreshing liquor, tasting of licorice with a soupçon of peppermint, remains the staple drink at Sunday lunch, an eat-till-you-drop extravaganza of small meze dishes.
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