Since the early 19th century, to soft-soap someone is to flatter them or give them excessively deferential treatment. The idea is that soft soap is unctuous and if you pour soft soap down someone’s back or pour soft soap into someone’s...
As we noted in an earlier conversation, people in the United States usually pronounce the word buoy as BOO-ee, but their counterparts in Britain tend to pronounce it BOY. Commercials airing in the U.S. for Lifebuoy soap use the British...
How did serialized melodramas come to be called soap operas? The answer has to do with the suds-selling sponsors of old-time radio shows. This is part of a complete episode.
slabbing n.— «Dry cleaning used to be a skill. It worked because it allowed you to suspend 30 per cent of water inside a solvent “jacket” using an emulsifier called a “soap.” This technique, called “slabbing...
docu-soap n.— «Beers, who often narrates his own shows, has found a winning formula for his “docu-soaps,” as he calls them. His series typically profile men with blue-collar jobs, such as crab fishermen, truckers, Texas oil wildcatters...
pro kit n.— «Venereal disease was a major, major thing. In fact, when our men went out on a pass, into town for the night, they had to demonstrate to us two things: That they had a condom and that they had a prophylactic kit, a little...