malmsey

• malmesey

Via Middle English malmesye from Middle Dutch malemeseye, from Italian via Old French, ultimately from Ancient Greek Μονεμβασία (Monembasía, “Monemvasia”, a city on the Peloponnese), from μόνος (mónos, “only one”) + ἔμβασις (émbasis, “entering into”, ἐν- + βάσις). Doublet of malvoisie.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑːmzɪ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑ(l)mzi/

malmsey (countable and uncountable, plural malmseys)

1. A sweet fortified wine made in Madeira, originally from the malvasia grape.

   Synonym: malvoisie

   • c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv]:

     Take that, and that, if all this will not do, Stabs him. Ile drowne you in the Malmesey-But within.

   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:
     , New York, published 2001, page 223:

     All black wines, over-hot, compound, strong, thick drinks, as muscadine, malmsey, alicant, rumney, brown bastard, metheglin, and the like […]

   • 1886, Gustave Flaubert, chapter XII, in Eleanor Marx-Aveling, transl., Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners […], London: Vizetelly & Co., […], →OCLC, part II, page 210:

     Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.

malmsey

1. alternative form of malmesye