Glossary · History
Sicera
Latin. Kept in its own language here rather than translated into the nearest English word, because the nearest English word is usually cut on a different axis.
Definition
The Late Latin word from which cider, cidre, sidra and sagardo descend, itself from Greek sikera and ultimately from a Semitic root meaning strong drink.
- Subject
- History
- Language
- Latin
In more detail
The chain of derivation is well established, but its meaning is not: sicera in biblical and Late Latin usage means intoxicating drink in general, not apple drink specifically. The narrowing to fermented apple juice happened in the vernaculars of western Europe, and the date at which it did so is not securely fixed.
This is worth stating because the word’s ancestry is frequently offered as evidence that cider is of great antiquity in a particular place. It is evidence about vocabulary, not about orchards.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Cider
Cider
A fermented alcoholic drink made from the juice of apples. What may legally be sold under the name varies sharply between countries, so the word describes a family of drinks rather than a single specification.
Cider
Sidra natural
Asturian and Basque cider fermented to complete dryness from pure juice, unfiltered, uncarbonated and bottled without added gas or sugar. It is poured from a height to raise a momentary foam.
Culture
Sagardoa
The Basque word for cider. It is usually parsed as *sagar* (apple) and *ardo* (wine) — apple wine — and the drink is central to Basque food culture.
Perry
Poiré
French perry: pear juice fermented, in the Domfrontais made largely from local perry pears, keeved and bottled to finish sparkling and off-dry.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Hereford Museum of Cider collections and interpretation
Hereford Cider Museum Trust · museum · retrieved 2026-08-24
Pomona, or an Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to Cider
John Evelyn, Royal Society · historical source · passage verified 2026-08-24 · covers 1664
Identified on 2026-08-24 from the 1670 edition held by the Internet Archive. The attribution needs correcting and CiderHQ has corrected it: *Pomona* is not a book by John Evelyn. It is an appendix annexed to Evelyn’s *Sylva*, published by express order of the Royal Society, and the contributors recorded for the volume are John Evelyn, John Beale, Daniel Colwall, Paul Neile, John Newburgh and Sylas Taylor. Beale has his own entry in this register, and the overlap is not a coincidence — the two texts come out of the same Royal Society enquiry into cider in the 1660s. Citing *Pomona* as Evelyn’s flattens a collaborative compilation into a single-author work.