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Another name for hydrochloric acid is muriatic acid. My Latin ears immediately pricked and wondered if this was squished down mice (mus, muris) or something to do with destroying a wall (murus, muri). But no, it's derived from the Latin muriaticus meaning "pickled", from muria "brine". Thus neatly connecting it to another name for hydrochoric acid: spirit of salt.

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Adam
Adam
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huh. Brine in French is _saumure_. I wonder if that's related and if so what the _sau_ morpheme is.
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Wynke
Wynke
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@pseudomonas Sau sounds like it may be related to sal/salt/zout. So that would make it 'salt brine'?
@Adam
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Wynke
Wynke
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@pseudomonas Maybe even 'as opposed to pickled with vinegar or lactic acid'?

The Dutch word for hydrochloric acid is 'zoutzuur' (literally 'salt acid').

@Adam
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Adam
Adam
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sounds plausible; middle french messes with terminal -l words to make them dipthongs, as part of the consonant eradication programme.
This entry was edited (3 months ago)
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Adam
Adam
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@wynke wiktionary says
> Inherited from Old French salmuire, from Late Latin salimuria, from Latin sal + muria.
@Wynke
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Adam
Adam
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Offal

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This entry was edited (3 months ago)
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Adam
Adam
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@wynke I have just looked up "offal" to see if this CW was in fact labelled strictly correctly, and I'm facepalming at not realising hitherto that it's cognate with _afval_ (and _Abfall_).
@Wynke
in reply to Adam

Wynke
Wynke
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@pseudomonas That one was pretty obvious to me, but then I'm Dutch so I learned 'afval' first. (And my brain really likes to find these connections between languages, although I miss many too.)
@Adam
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