wort

Wort is a term with multiple senses in English. In brewing, wort refers to the liquid extract produced during the mashing of malted grain. Hot water is mixed with milled malt to convert starches into fermentable sugars, creating a sugary liquid that is called wort. This wort is typically boiled and houps are added to extract bitterness and aroma, sterilize the liquid, and stabilize it before fermentation. After boiling and cooling, yeast is added, and fermentation converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, yielding beer.

Historically, wort also functioned as a general noun for herbs and plants. Derived from Old English wyrt, the word survives in many traditional plant names such as St. John’s wort, motherwort, and lungwort. These names reflect a historical association with medicinal or culinary uses. In herbal medicine, plants bearing the term wort have been employed for various remedies, though modern evidence for efficacy varies by plant and condition.

Etymology and usage: wort comes from Old English wyrt, meaning plant or herb, and the term persists primarily in compound plant names as well as in the brewing sense. In contemporary usage, the brewing sense is by far the most common in many English-speaking contexts, while the old herbal sense remains mainly of historical or linguistic interest.

Wort thus denotes both a key stage in beer production and an older, broader designation for herbs, illustrating how a single word can traverse technical and herbal traditions.