Origin and history of alum

"intoxicating liquor made by malt fermentation," Old English ealu "ale, beer," from Proto-Germanic *aluth- (source also of Old Saxon alo, Old Norse öl), which is of uncertain origin. Perhaps from a PIE root meaning "bitter" (source also of Latin alumen "alum"), or from PIE *alu-t "ale," from root *alu-, which has connotations of "sorcery, magic, possession, and intoxication" [Watkins]. The word was borrowed from Germanic into Lithuanian (alus) and Old Church Slavonic (olu).

In the fifteenth century, and until the seventeenth, ale stood for the unhopped fermented malt liquor which had long been the native drink of these islands. Beer was the hopped malt liquor introduced from the Low Countries in the fifteenth century and popular first of all in the towns. By the eighteenth century, however, all malt liquor was hopped and there had been a silent mutation in the meaning of the two terms. For a time the terms became synonymous, in fact, but local habits of nomenclature still continued to perpetuate what had been a real difference: 'beer' was the malt liquor which tended to be found in towns, 'ale' was the term in general use in the country districts. [Peter Mathias, "The Brewing Industry in England," Cambridge University Press, 1959]

Meaning "festival or merry-meeting at which much ale was drunk" was in Old English (see bridal).

by 1812, from alumina, alumine, the name given by French chemists late 18c. to aluminum oxide, from Latin alumen "alum" (see alum). Sir Humphry Davy, working to isolate it, called it alumium (1808), later he used aluminum (by 1812), which remains the U.S. word.

The form aluminium, the modern preferred British word, was proposed by January 1811 in an account of Davy's published experiments written by William Hyde Wollaston (discoverer of palladium and rhodium) and printed in The Critical Review:

Potassium, acting upon alumine and glucine, produces pyrophoric substances of a dark grey colour, which burnt, throwing off brilliant sparks, and leaving behind alkali and earth, and which, when thrown into water, decomposed it with great violence. The result of this experiment is not wholly decisive as to the existence of what might be called aluminium and glucinium.

It better harmonizes with the other metallic element names (sodium, potassium).

Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. [Quarterly Review, September 1812]

Aluminum foil attested by 1859; popularized in food packaging from c. 1950.