High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Uisce beatha (Irish pronunciation: ) is the name for whiskey in the Irish language. The word "whiskey" itself is simply an anglicized version of this phrase, stemming from a mispronunciation of the word uisce. This may in turn have influenced the Modern Irish word fuisce ("whiskey"). The phrase uisce beatha, literally "water of life", was the name given by Irish monks of the early Middle Ages to distilled alcohol. It is simply a translation of the Latin aqua vitae.