absinthe
noun
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In 1797, Swiss Henri-Louis Pernod was the first to commercially produce an alcoholic drink from the bitter herb Artemisia absinthium, known commonly as wormwood. By the mid-to-late 1800s this bright green distillation, by then known in both French and English as "absinthe," had become wildly popular, especially among artists and writers, but it also had a reputation for making people a little wild. In fact, it was linked to several nasty disorders, including convulsions and foaming at the mouth. The accused culprit? A toxin in wormwood - perhaps the very chemical that gives the plant its tapeworm-exterminating properties (and thus its name). Because of these reported side effects of wormwood, true absinthe was banned in many countries (including the U.S.) in the early 1900s, but that didn't remove the taste for the drink. Wormwood’s name was later cleared (the real culprit turned out to be the drink’s high alcohol content) and the absinthe ban was lifted in the U.S. in 2007.
Examples of absinthe in a Sentence
Ben Croll, Variety, 14 July 2025
And the duo who invented the drink at Brooklyn bar Maison Premiere pushed the cocktail even further, recruiting not a dash or a rinse but a full ounce of absinthe, and just for good measure, a spike of creme de menthe.
—Jeremy Repanich, Robb Report, 11 July 2025
That event contributed to the banning of absinthe in Switzerland in 1908, and in France in 1915.
—Tom Mullen, Forbes, 3 Nov. 2024
The Best Cocktail for Mystery Fans: Death in the Afternoon
Author Ernest Hemingway claims to have invented this simple spritz—mix 1 ½ ounces of absinthe with 4 ounces of Champagne—and named it Death in the Afternoon.
—Karla Walsh, Better Homes & Gardens, 29 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for absinthe
Cite this Entry
“Absinthe.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absinthe. Accessed 20 Jul. 2025.
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absinthe
noun
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