cordialis

Cordialis comes from Latin cor (heart, genitive cordis). In Medieval Latin, cordialis meant 'of or for the heart.' Apothecaries prescribed cordial medicines — drinks believed to stimulate the heart, warm the blood, and restore vitality. These were not beverages for pleasure. They were pharmaceutical preparations: distilled spirits infused with herbs, spices, and sugar, dispensed in small doses. The word entered English in the fourteenth century carrying the authority of medical Latin.

By the sixteenth century, the line between medicine and drink had blurred. Cordials were still made by apothecaries, but households also produced them. Receipt books — the domestic recipe manuscripts kept by literate women — are full of cordial recipes: rosewater cordial, mint cordial, cherry cordial. Lady Sedley's cordial water, a popular seventeenth-century recipe, required three days of distillation. The drink was moving from pharmacy to parlor, but it kept its medical name.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, commercial liqueur producers adopted the word. Benedictine, Chartreuse, and other monastery-produced spirits were marketed as cordials. In American English, cordial still means a sweet liqueur. But in British English, a second meaning emerged: cordial became a concentrated fruit syrup diluted with water, essentially a squash or concentrate. Ribena, the blackcurrant drink, is a cordial. So is elderflower cordial. The heart medicine became a children's drink.

The word cordial also survived as an adjective meaning warm and friendly, from the same Latin root. A cordial greeting and a cordial drink share the idea that something warms you from the inside. The medical meaning is gone. The warmth remains, split between a feeling and a beverage.