Our word alcohol and algebra. al kohl which women used to darken their eyelids. By a process of generalization, it came to Alcohol was first used to mean the essence of wine itself by the 16th-century German alchemist Paracelsus. Food Words: comes from medieval Arab alchemy, which strongly influenced Western science and gave it several other important terms, including chemistry, alkali, To the Arabs, was the dark powder of the metal antimony, mean any fine powder, and then for the essence of any material