Anyone know how we came to start marketing lotions for use on the body as milks, butters and creams? Sure makes 'em sound rich and inviting - that must be part of the reasoning behind it - but how did it come about, I wonder....Feed your skin!

Quite a few fierce feline females have used milk baths for a couple thousand years.
" Lactose is present in the milk of mammals. Milk
leaves the skin feeling silky smooth with a hydrated appearance. An
effective and softening skin cleanser. Milk proteins smooth, firm and soften
the skin. Milk is high in hydrophilic (water) and lipophilic (fat) factors and
has beneficial vitamins and sugars. It has excellent nutritive value, is
packed with proteins, beneficial fats, vitamins, amino acids and calcium. It
is easily absorbed into the skin. Milk has a long standing in beauty history.
Many of the historic beauties testified to milks effectiveness with their
faithful use of milk in their beauty regime. Cleopatra took aromatic milk
baths, Emperor Nero's wife Poppea bathed in milk and even Marie
Antoinette used buttermilk to prevent wrinkles. The "new" alpha hydroxy
acid skin treatments are simply made up of lactic acid (milk), citric acid,
glycolic, malic, and tartaric acids. These treatments are not new at all.
Cleopatra's famous milk baths contained lactic acid, which removed the
upper layer of the skin to revel smooth, new skin. "

I've always used the word "hand cream" as opposed to "hand lotion". I guess it's part of my family's idiolect. Remember when "conditioner" was called "creme rinse"?

While milk (or, as we more properly pronounced it in my youth in Chicago, melk) has pretty much always referred to the nutritive fluid produced by female mammals for their offspring, cream comes from a Late Latin word meaning ointment.

Late Latin word meaning ointment.

Well, since my father is the one who uses handcream morning, noon, and night, and he's Italian, which would be extremely late Latin, I'm guessing that handcream is his English translation of the Italian word for handcream (which I don't know off-hand )

So, Bean--what does he use on his feet?

In one of those strange twists of linguistic chaos that exist in my childhood home - it's all handcream - whether you use it on your feet, or arms, or legs, or hands.

We are also talking about the man who got me saying "bluejeans" as all one word to refer to that type of clothing. The result is that if I see jeans in another colour I will call them, say "red bluejeans". Argh!!!!!

In trying to think up a joke about bluejeans, I looked up "jeans" in my dictionary and got a rurpise:
ean 7jcn8
n.
5< ME Gene (fustian), (fustian) of Genoa < OFr Janne < ML Janua < L Genua, Genoa6
1 a durable cotton cloth in a twill weave, used for work clothes and

Which reminds me. In early days of TV, there was a children's program Captain Kangaroo,
with character Mr. Green Jeans.

and denims are really "of Nemes" {de nimes} cloth, from the strong twill made in france. both of the twills were used as sail cloth, and then later at tent cloth-- Levi (of levi jeans) went to california to make his fortune not digging for gold but by selling sturdy tent to the prospectors. supposedly when he got to california he found what the miners wanted was sturdy work pants, one with pockets that wouldn't rip apart when filled with gold, and he made work pants with rivets to hold the pockets on... and so started an industry.

Jeans are (were) most commony blue, because indigo, is a one the few dyes that doesn't weaken cloth, but actually make cotton stronger. (or is it alleged to) most dyes are harmless, its it the mordant that weaken the fibers. indigo uses salt as a mordant.

It's good to see you back, helen. I love sampling your encyclopedic knowledge of fabrics!