Oakvillian

Ah. That one I know, since I once knew a guy called ffoulkes who was at pains to point out the impossibility of entering a last name without a capital letter on many online forms.

The ff (never Ff) is apparently an obsolete hangover from 15th century legal English handwriting, where a perfectly normal F developed extra vertical "ticks" at the end of the upper horizontal, to the point that it eventually looked like a ligature of two lowercase f's. Few surnames keep the style, but some surnames like ffoulkes, ffrench, ffarington, ffinch, ffloyd and others keep the bastardization alive. And then there are some pretentious abominations who keep the double consonant but capitalize the first: that's just plain wrong, IMO.

Lion in Winter

He was Mexican, so no idea how that rule applies in Spanish. He was quite nice, except that he would kiss my hand in greeting which was a bit - odd.

macliam

Kissing anything else might have been considered a ffaux pas!

Lion in Winter

And he was nothing if not ffastidious.

el collado kid

A weather word. precipitation or i would use rain

Lion in Winter

Often followed by petrichor.

Red Eric

That might be a bit precipitate of you.

Red Eric

It'll come to you at 2:45 am on Sunday.

macliam

When I recall tasting the water in Bath, all I think of was warm and unpleasant.... but I should have realised it was in fact Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriol ic.

A word for us all to remember, describing as it does the equally salty, chalky, waxy, aluminous, copper-oxidy taste of the water..... obvious really.

(and I don't know why this editor insists on putting a space in front of the final "ic", but it does......)

Lion in Winter

I'm surprised there's no sulphur in there. Bath water is vile stuff.

BristolUK

What do you expect after sitting in it washing?

Pulaski

Acidic too, apparently.

macliam

My error, I should have described the taste as equally salty, chalky, waxy, aluminous, copper-sulphatey...... a vitriol is a sulphate, caused by the action of "oil of vitriol" on a metal. Chemistry never was my subject

Vitriol as an expression is shorthand for oil of vitriol, i.e. that liquid that causes vitriol to be produced, i.e. sulphuric acid.

Bath water was great for swimming - it once had cheap public swimming poools heated by the natural spring water..... the Cross bath, the Royal bath and the Beau street baths, but then the council decided to buils a soulless "heath centre" like everywhere else and abandoned the central pools. There was a story that someone might have contracted diptheria from the untreated water and it gave the council all the excuse they needed to sell off the sites to a private concern. Welcome to true "soak the tourists" at the private luxury spa that grew up utilising the space of those original pools.

Pulaski

Interesting - I have learned something. I knew that "oil of vitriol" is sulphic acid, but I didn't know that "vitriol" is "sulphate", I had always assumed is was a synonym for "acid".

macliam

Sorry I indulged myself in an edit about the "evolution" of Bath whilst you were posting. Vitriol is supposedly due to the glasst appearance of the sulphates, so its use as an acid doesn't stack up except as shorthand for "oil of vitriol". Change of use.... exactly what we've discussed about words...