A distilled beverage, spirit, liquor, hard liquor or hard alcohol is an alcoholic beverage produced by distillation of grains, fruit, or vegetables that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. This process purifies it and removes diluting components like water, for the purpose of increasing its proportion of alcohol content (commonly expressed as alcohol by volume Alc/Vol. As distilled beverages contain more alcohol, they are considered “harder” – in North America, the term hard liquor is used to distinguish distilled beverages from undistilled ones.