Hm… In german there’s not even a big difference between the words. One is ‘Lösungsmittel’ the other one is ‘Lösung’. So I think for us it works fine either way.
No, because the alcohol in a drink (ethanol) is still not a solution.
That’s not the original meaning either. The original meaning came from Arabic for a stibnite distillation used as eye liner. It came from Al-kuhl. It’s the same way that “spirit” came to mean a hard liquor. Distilling something down to its purest form was meant to harness the “spirit” of the thing.
A given spirit is a solution of alcohol and water, but alcohol itself is not. Which makes the whole “technically” part of the joke fall flat.
As well as e.g. sugars. I know. Thus, commonly the term alcohol referrs to either Ethanol (“alcohol”) or the whole group of substances (“an alcohol”, “alcohols”).
Ethanol can exist in pure form. It absorbs water as soon as it comes into contact with it, but 100% (or as close to 100% as any chemical) Ethanol is possible when stored correctly.
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