amongst distillers, a term employed to express the debasing the strength of any spirituous liquor, by mixing water with it. The standard and marketable price of these liquors is fixed in regard to a certain strength in them called proof; or that strength which makes them, when shaken in a phial or poured from on high into a glass, retain for some time a froth or crown of bubbles. In this state spirits consist of about half pure or totally inflammable spirit, and half water; and if any foreign or home spirit be exposed to sale, and found to have that proof wanting, scarcely any body will buy it until it has been distilled again and brought to the proper strength; and if it be above that strength, the proprietor usually adds water to bring it down to the standard. There is another kind of lowering amongst the retailers of spirituous liquors to the vulgar, by reducing it under the standard proof. Whoever has the art of doing this without destroying the bubble proof, which is easily done by means of some addition which gives a greater tenacity to the parts of the spirits, will deceive all who judge by this proof alone. In this case the best way to judge of liquors is by the eye and the tongue, and especially by the instrument called the hydrometer.