Mead ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown. The English "mead" – "fermented honey drink" – derives from the Old English "meodu" or "medu", and Proto-Germanic, *"meduz" (source also of Old Norse mjöðr, Danish mjød, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch mede, Old High German metu, German Met "mead"). "Madh", and the related terms "mad" (मद, مد) and "madira" (मदिरा, مدِرا), also mean alcohol. These words are all derived from the
Big Chief tablet home on Frederick Boulevard in St. Joseph is now the Albrecht-Kemper Art Museum. Western Tablet trademarked the Big Chief in 1947. Western Tablet expanded in the 1920s and moved its headquarters to Dayton, Ohio but most of the manufacturing components remained in St. Joseph. In 1964 the company was renamed "Westab." Usage of the Big Chief peaked in the 1960s when another Westab invention—the spiral notebook—began to claim bigger market share. In 1966, the Mead Corporation acquired the Western Tablet. Mead subsequently sold the Big Chief line to Springfield Tablet of Springfield, Missouri. In January 2001, Everett Pad and Paper