ABV is the short label you see on a bottle of beer, wine, or spirits. The letters stand for alcohol by volume: what share of the drink, as a part of the whole, is alcohol. A beer at 5% ABV is five parts alcohol in a hundred parts of liquid; a whisky at 40% ABV is much stronger. The number is a percentage, not a secret code, and it is the usual shop-and-label way to say “how strong is this?” People read it as the three letters, or they just say “five percent alcohol”. Though actually, older American bottles also talk about proof, which is a different scale (about twice the ABV number), so the same drink can look “80 proof” and “40% ABV” at once. ABV is labelling language — short and technical. It is not a verb, and it is not the word above.