absinthe

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The Word of the Day for December 2 is:

absinthe   \AB-sinth\   noun
     1 : wormwood; especially : a common European wormwood 
(_Artemisia absinthium_)
    *2 : a green liqueur which is flavored with wormwood, anise, 
and other aromatic herbs and commercial production of which is 
banned in many countries for health concerns

Example sentence:
     "I draw the line at absinthe, a bottle of which is still 
sitting in my liquor cabinet five years after it was received, 
gleaming ominously." (Alexandra Jacobs, _The New York Times_, 
November 7, 2004)

Did you know?
     In 1797, the 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 
tendency to make people a little wild. In fact, it was linked to 
several nasty disorders, including convulsions and foaming at 
the mouth. The culprit? A toxin in wormwood -- perhaps the very 
chemical that gives the plant its tapeworm-exterminating 
properties (and thus its name). Because of these horrific side 
effects, 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. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.