mountain soap

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English

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Noun

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mountain soap (uncountable)

  1. (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 []

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