In chemistry, an alcohol is any organic compound in which the hydroxyl functional group is bound to a saturated carbon atom. The term alcohol originally referred to the primary alcohol ethanol, which is used as a drug and is the main alcohol present in alcoholic beverages. The suffix -ol appears in the IUPAC chemical name of all substances where the hydroxyl group is the functional group with the highest priority; in substances where a higher priority group is present the prefix hydroxy- will ap