SOAP
Wild Word Friday!
I keep a basket of handmade and specialty SOAPs in our guest bathroom. However, as much as I love handmade SOAP, I’m delighted that I don’t have to make it. Lard and lye just aren’t on my list of favorite things to work with, but I’m highly grateful for all those SOAP makers out there who don’t mind!
The word SOAP is one of the most ancient in our language and has its roots in the ancient Indo-European language with the base word seib- which means to run out or trickle. That base word alone tells us that people have been melting fat or using plant oils to make SOAP for thousands of years. The prehistoric Germanic adaptation of seib- is saipo (long o sound), which in Old English became sape (long a sound) and in Middle English saip. Our modern spelling of the word SOAP didn’t appear until the end of the 1600s.
Aren’t you glad somebody invented SOAP? Do you have a favorite kind or scent?
Blessings,
Sue
(Information from The Chronology of Words and Phrases and Webster’s New World Dictionary. Photo from Wikipedia.)
Sope makes more sense than soap, Mike. After all, that e on the end of the word tells us that the o should have a long sound and say its own name. Thanks for connecting!
Someone pointed me to this page after I posted an image of a mural showing the word soap as ‘sope’. The mural, on my page, is from about 1900 and in Embro, Ontario, Canada.