malmsey

plural malmseys · alternative malmesey

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

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

   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]

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

   1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, New York: New York Review Books, published 2001, →ISBN, page 223

   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.

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

   Synonyms: malvoisie