Soft drink used to mean any drink that didn’t contain alcohol (a hard drink). Later it was adopted by the soda industry to refer to their product. They settled on soft drink because of the plethora of regional names that the drink went by (coke, soda, pop, minerals, etc.) Soft drink was a universal term, but with time, it’s become so closely assosiated with sodas that it is no longer used for any other type of beverage.
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