Soap
nounA substance made from fat and alkali, used with water for washing and cleaning.
How to spell soap
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce soap
What does soap mean?
- nounA substance made from fat and alkali, used with water for washing and cleaning.
- verbTo rub or cover something with soap.
Soap in a sentence
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noun
She kept a bar of soap beside the kitchen sink.
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verb
Remember to soap your hands thoroughly before cooking.
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noun
The hotel left a small bottle of liquid soap in the bathroom.
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verb
He likes to soap the car gently to avoid scratching the paint.
Where does soap come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Soap comes from the Old English word sape, which named an ointment or salve used for dressing hair and treating skin rather than the cleaning bar we know today. The word belongs to a wider Germanic family, with relatives such as the Dutch zeep and the German Seife, all pointing back to a root meaning something rubbed on or smeared. Roman writers even recorded the Latin form sapo as a Germanic borrowing, describing a reddish mixture of tallow and ash that northern peoples used to colour their hair. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed to the familiar substance that cleans, and the spelling settled with the simple 'oa' vowel pairing that English keeps for words like 'soak' and 'load'. The short, native origin is why soap looks and sounds so plain, with no silent letters or borrowed flourishes.
How the word is built
- soap (single Old English root; no affixes)
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