Why is it sometimes spelt tumeric and other times turmeric?
Why, now that I have spilt it on kitchen towels, pot holders, several aprons and the occasional shirt, is it not used as a dye for cloth, since I can't get the yellow stains out of anything it touches?
It is, in fact used as a dye for fabric. It's in many of my natural dye books.
Of course, the rule for anything that changes the colour of a fabric is that it does so best when dyeing or staining something that you want to remove the colour from. This is why blueberries produce a wretched grey dye on fabric, unless you drop them on your best white shirt, in which case the spot is bright purple and never fades.
it is--but vegetable dyes are often set with mordants-- these can be salts (common salt, other salts) or acid.
in the pressence of a base, such as baking soda (sodium bicarbonate--(a salt and an ??(that word i always forget how to spell that is the scientific term for the opposite for acid) ) and heat, tumeric turns red--
the red 'dot' worn as a religious/spiritial mark by many asian indian woman is made with tumeric. (and other red dyes, too!
(several years ago, the Museum of Nat. History had a special exhibit on indian sub-continent culture.. this is one of several factoids that stuck in my head (i think we discussed it before too, (and max gave a clearer definition of the meaning of the dot--which didn't stick), mea culpa)
Why is it sometimes spelt tumeric and other times turmeric?
It is sometimes misspelt tumeric because it is sometimes pronounced tumeric.
tumeric = 87,400 Googlits
turmeric = 956,000 Googlits
See also
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW172/page2.html which agrees with Faldo.
German = das Turmerikpulver, which also supports Faldage, like a girdle.
From Gurunet:
tur·mer·ic (tūr'mər-ĭk, tū'-)
n.
1. A widely cultivated tropical plant (Curcuma domestica) of India, having yellow flowers and an aromatic, somewhat fleshy rhizome.
2. The powdered rhizome of this plant, used as a condiment and a yellow dye.
3. Any of several other plants having similar rhizomes.
[Alteration of Middle English termeryte, from Old French terre-merite, saffron, from Medieval Latin terra merita : Latin terra, earth + Latin merita, feminine past participle of merēre, to deserve.]
Wonder if that merit part has anything to do with why it's used for the dot.
Edit: woops! Sorry for mantling you, Father Steve; I should have gone to your link before making my post. Your link was better, in any case.
It appears to be a member of the ginger family
http://snipurl.com/hbx6 (in German)
Sorry for mantling you, Father Steve; I should have gone to your link before making my post.
No problem, Jackie. I am rarely driven to apoplexy by mantling. Nor even particularly riled by it. Nor even really annoyed by it. Compared to genocide, terrorism, indifference to poverty, and whatever it was that happened to Britney Spears, mantling me is as nothing.
"Compared to . . . whatever it was that happened to Britney Spears, mantling me is as nothing."
Fr. Steve, you are incorrect on this one. I have yet to find anyone who knows or cares what happened to Britney Spears, while everyone here cares about what may have happened to you.
can't get the yellow stains out of anything it touches?
Don't wash it, head straight to the dry cleaners and point it out to them. Same goes for the pollen from lillies. - that is if you're sentimentally attached to the tea towels enough to pay.
Same goes for the pollen from lillies.
Only a rookie priest (the one with the yellow stains on his alb) fails to notice the difficulty of removing lilly pollen from vestments, especially white vestments. This is why the members of the altar guild laboriously remove the stamens from the Easter lilies (in another room) before setting them out in the church for Easter morning.
>>alb
Is this word related to the Italian "alba"?
alb
The term for the modern ecclesiatsical vestment derives from "vestis alba" which just meant white garment.
So getting egg white out of the vestment isn't a problem, yes?
"albumen. 1599, "white of an egg," from L. albumen "white of an egg," lit. "whiteness," from albus "white" (see alb). The organic substance (which exists nearly pure in egg whites) so called from 1800, also known as albumin (1869, from Fr. albumine)."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=albumenGood one, AnnaS.