Eisell

Wormwood wine. Hamlet says to Laertes, Woulʹt drink up eisell—i.e. drink wormwood wine to show your love to the dead Ophelia? In the Troy Book of Ludgate we have the line “Of bitter eysell and of eager [sour] wine.” And in Shakespeare’s sonnets;

“I will drink

Potions of eysell, gainst my strong infection;

No bitterness that I will bitter think,

Nor double penance to correct correction.”

· ·

Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.