Title: Alcohol
Content:  The word "alcohol" is from the Arabic kohl (الكحل), a powder used as an eyeliner. Al- is the Arabic definite article, equivalent to the in English. Alcohol was originally used for the very fine powder produced by the sublimation of the natural mineral stibnite to form antimony trisulfide. It was considered to be the essence or "spirit" of this mineral. It was used as an antiseptic, eyeliner, and cosmetic. The meaning of alcohol was extended to distilled substances in general, and then narrowed to ethanol, when "spirits" was a synonym for hard liquor. Bartholomew Traheron, in his 1543 translation of John of Vigo, introduces the word as a term used by "barbarous" authors for "fine powder." Vigo wrote: "the barbarous auctours use alcohol, or (as I fynde it sometymes wryten) alcofoll, for 
Title: Alcoholism
Content:  Historically the name "dipsomania" was coined by German physician C.W. Hufeland in 1819 before it was superseded by "alcoholism". That term now has a more specific meaning. The term "alcoholism" was first used in 1849 by the Swedish physician Magnus Huss to describe the systematic adverse effects of alcohol. Alcohol has a long history of use and misuse throughout recorded history. Biblical, Egyptian and Babylonian sources record the history of abuse and dependence on alcohol. In some ancient cultures alcohol was worshiped and in others, its misuse was condemned. Excessive alcohol misuse and drunkenness were recognized as causing social problems even thousands of years ago. However, the defining of habitual drunkenness as it was then known as and its adverse consequences were not well established medically until the 18th century. In 
Title: Alcohol
Content:  fine poudre." The 1657 Lexicon Chymicum, by William Johnson glosses the word as "antimonium sive stibium." By extension, the word came to refer to any fluid obtained by distillation, including "alcohol of wine," the distilled essence of wine. Libavius in Alchymia (1594) refers to "vini alcohol vel vinum alcalisatum". Johnson (1657) glosses alcohol vini as "quando omnis superfluitas vini a vino separatur, ita ut accensum ardeat donec totum consumatur, nihilque fæcum aut phlegmatis in fundo remaneat." The word's meaning became restricted to "spirit of wine" (the chemical known today as ethanol) in the 18th century and was extended to the class of substances so-called as "alcohols" in modern chemistry after 1850. The term ethanol was invented in 1892, blending "ethane" with the "-ol" ending of "alcohol", which was generalized as a libfix.
Title: Schnapps
Content:   Schnapps ( or ) or schnaps is a type of alcoholic beverage that may take several forms, including distilled fruit brandies, herbal liqueurs, infusions, and "flavored liqueurs" made by adding fruit syrups, spices, or artificial flavorings to neutral grain spirits. The English loanword "schnapps" is derived from the colloquial German word Schnaps (plural: Schnäpse),  which is used in reference to spirit drinks. The word Schnaps stems from Low German and is related to the German term "schnappen", meaning "snap", which refers to the spirit usually being consumed in a quick slug from a small glass (i.e., a shot glass).
Title: Ardent spirit
Content:  Ardent spirits (ethyl alcohol), in alchemy, are those liquors obtained after repeated distillations from fermented vegetables. They are thus called because they will take fire and burn. Examples include brandy, spirits of wine, etc.
Title: History of alcoholic drinks
Content:  compendium of practice, though it has been claimed that much of it derives from Braunschweig's work. This includes diagrams showing an industrial rather than bench scale of the operation. Names like "life water" have continued to be the inspiration for the names of several types of beverages, like Gaelic whisky, French eaux-de-vie and possibly vodka. Also, the Scandinavian akvavit spirit gets its name from the Latin phrase aqua vitae. At times and places of poor public sanitation (such as Medieval Europe), the consumption of alcoholic drinks was a way of avoiding water-borne diseases such as cholera. Small beer and faux wine in particular, were used 
Title: Tincture
Content:  for nitric acid (but "sweet spirit of nitre" was ethyl nitrite) ; Similarly "spirit(s) of salt" actually meant hydrochloric acid. The concentrated, fuming, 35% acid is still sold under this name in the UK, for use as a drain-cleaning fluid. ; "Spirit of vinegar" is an antiquated term for glacial acetic acid ; "Spirit of vitriol" is an antiquated term for sulfuric acid ; "Spirit of wine" or "spirits of wine" is an old term for alcohol (especially food grade alcohol derived from the distillation of wine) ; "Spirit of wood" referred to methanol, often derived from the destructive distillation of wood Some examples that were formerly common in medicine include: Examples of spirits include:
Title: Rectified spirit
Content:  multi-column stills at 96–96.5% ABV and diluted as necessary. Ethanol is a commonly used medical alcohol, spiritus fortis is a medical term for ethanol with 95% ABV. Neutral spirits can be produced from grains, corn, grapes, sugar beets, sugarcane, tubers, or other fermented plant materials. In particular, large quantities of neutral alcohol are distilled from wine and/or residues of wine production (pomace, lees). A product made from grain is "neutral grain spirit", while a spirit made from grapes is called "grape neutral spirit" or "vinous alcohol". These terms are commonly abbreviated as either GNS or NGS. Neutral spirits are used in the production of several spirit drinks, such as blended 
Title: List of English words of Arabic origin (A-B)
Content:  powder. The word with that meaning entered Latin in the 13th century spelled alcohol. In Latin in the 14th and 15th centuries the sole meaning was a very fine-grained powder, made of any material. In various cases the powder was obtained by crushing, but in various other cases the powder was obtained by calcination or by sublimation & deposition. In the alchemy and medicine writer Theophrastus Paracelsus (died 1541), the alcohol powders produced by sublimation & deposition were viewed as kinds of distillates, and with that mindset he extended the word's meaning to distillate of wine. "Alcohol of wine" (ethanol) 
Title: Disease theory of alcoholism
Content:  drink ever more.” Later he wrote an enthusiastic preface to the book On the addiction to drink and a rational cure of it by German-Russian physician C. von Brühl-Cramer. As Spode points out, this study marked the birth of a consistent "paradigm" of addiction as a mental illness, although it took many decades until this view was accepted. In 1849 Swedish physician Magnus Huss coined the term "alcoholism" in his book Alcoholismus chronicus. Some argue he was the first to systematically describe the physical characteristics of habitual drinking and claim that it was a mental disease. However, Huss regarded heavy drinking still as 

Question: where did the term spirits for alcohol come from?
Answer: Middle Eastern alchemy.