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Comment by agys | Hacker News Reader

Nice morning routine: at 10am a little glass of wine and stringed instruments playing the sweetest possible music.

Little has changed, except it's coffee and Spotify for me. Keep in mind that back then, wine / beer were an important source of clean drinking water, and it would often be low alcohol.

"He drank clear and simple wine, light in colour, ** well cut ** ". It's right there in the original medieval article.

Speaking of which, do you know what "well cut" means in this context?

It refers to diluting your wine with water

I never heard the term "cut" outside drugs that often involved putting something stronger but less expensive in

Assuming it's translated literally from French, and the meaning of the French verb "couper" hasn't changed since the Middle Ages, it means mixing with water, and is a widely used expression in French.

I’ve always heard it generally used as a synonym with dilute - generally speaking with drugs, cut often means incorporating any less expensive (not easily detectable) substance in with the original substance.

More times than not it will not be stronger, it will be compounds that are not psychoactive at all, effectively “cutting” the potency of the substance while multiplying the quantity.

There are cases with fentanyl where a stronger substance is mixed in with the original and this often is what you read about in the news, but it is not in generally in the distributors best interest to be killing their clientele.

If that was true everything would be cut with baking soda or water.

https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-wat...

"One should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, [he should stop when] he has eaten to close to three quarter's of full satisfaction. One should drink only a small amount of water during the meal, and mix that with wine. When the food begins to be digested in his intestines, he may drink what is necessary. However, he should not drink much water, even when the food has been digested."

Maimonedes Human Dispositions 4 (Trans. by Eliyahu Touger)

Discussed once here:

The great Medieval water myth (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031856 - Feb 2015 (71 comments)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com