Javel water
- noun
- Archaic
:
agua de Javel
- Many hospitals use Javel water to disinfect surgical instruments before procedures.
Examples
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To remove stains from her white clothes, she soaked them in Javel water overnight.
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After cleaning the surfaces with Javel water, the kitchen smelled fresh and free from germs.
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I tried not to take it personally as they have been preparing their own meals and grooming themselves with the Javel water we keep in the laundry room.
Blog text (30)
Synonyms
A liquid bleach used to whiten clothes and clean surfaces
A liquid used to bleach clothes or kill germs
Surface Forms
Morphology
Javel + water
The term 'Javel' is a lexicalized proper name (from French 'Eau de Javel') referring to a bleach/disinfectant, so knowing the constituent word 'water' does not allow a learner to infer the chemical/bleach meaning. This is a borrowed, conventionalized label rather than a compositional phrase, and cross-linguistic borrowing does not make its meaning predictable to a B1 learner who only knows the literal words.
Etymology
Javel water comes from the Javel area of Paris, where makers long ago made a strong bleaching liquid for clothes and called it Javel + water. That's why Javel water today means a strong cleaning solution used 'to disinfect' or 'to bleach'.
