A
distilled beverage,
spirit,
liquor,
hard liquor or
hard alcohol is an
alcoholic beverage produced by
distillation of a mixture produced from
alcoholic fermentation. This process purifies it and removes diluting components like water, for the purpose of increasing its
proportion of alcohol content (commonly expressed as alcohol by volume,
ABV). As distilled beverages contain more alcohol they are considered "harder" – in North America, the term
hard liquor is used to distinguish distilled beverages from undistilled ones, which are implicitly weaker.