mountain soap
English
Noun
- (possibly obsolete) A soft earthy mineral, of a brownish colour, which has a greasy or soapy feel and is used as a filler in crayons.
- 1805, Robert Jameson, A Treatise on the External Characters of Minerals, page 76:
- It soils either strongly, as chalk and mountain soap; or slightly, as molybdana, lead glauce, and graphite. Besides this, there are three other distinctions connected with this character to be attended to.
- 1848, American Journal of Science and Arts, page 72:
- […] seven different minerals possessing the same formula, namely, fahlunite, esmarkite, pyrargillite, bole, iron lithomarge, halloylite from La Vouth and from Thiviers, and mountain soap from Thuringia.
- 1859, Gustav Bischof, Elements of Chemical and Physical Geology ..., page 311:
- Sometimes, after removing the coating of calcspar from the crystals, they appear to be covered with a mass resembling steinmark or mountain soap. The compact and crystalline hornblende occurs almost everywhere as a constituent of the […]
References
- “mountain”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “mountain soap”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
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