History of Vodka and How to Prepare Vodka?
The name vodka is a diminutive form of the Slavic word voda (water), interpreted as little water: root (vod-) [water] + -к- (-k-) (diminutive suffix, among other functions) + -a (ending of feminine gender). The word vodka was recorded for the first time in 1405 in Akta Grodzkie, the court documents from the Palatinate of Sandomierz in Poland. At the time, wódka referred to medicines and cosmetic products, while the beverage was called gorzałka (from the Old Polish gorzeć meaning "to burn"), which is also the source of Ukrainian horilka (горілка). The word vodka written in Cyrillic appeared first in 1533, in relation to a medicinal drink brought from Poland to Russia by the merchants of Kievan Rus'. Although the word vodka could be found in early manuscripts and in lubok pictograms, it began to appear in Russian dictionaries only in the mid-19th century. It was attested in Sámuel Gyarmathi's Russian-German-Hungarian glossary of 1799, where it is glossed with Latin