Talk:figging

Dates of the soap-making sense

On Google Books, the earliest instance of the soap-making sense I spotted was the 1842 Magazine of Science, and Schools of Art (v. 1, p. 301: "When tallow is added, the object is to produce white and somewhat solid grains of stearic soap in the transparent mass, called figging"). It continued to be used through the 1920s (e.g. John Rome Battle's 1920 Handbook of Industrial Oil Engineering: "'Figging' is indicated in soft soap by streaks of white, usually radiating from the sides of the container inwards") and up through at least 1949 (for "figging") or 1952-53 (for "figged"); past that, I've only spotted reprints and quotations of older works. A similar phenomenon is now called ricing. - -sche (discuss) 20:46, 26 December 2018 (UTC)