A white crystalline mineral salt used in cleaning products, as a flux in metallurgy, and in making glass. It's commonly found in household detergents and has antiseptic properties.
From Medieval Latin borax, which came from Arabic بُورَق (būraq) or بُرَاق (burāq), meaning 'white'. The Arabic term was used for this mineral salt that was traded from deposits in Tibet and Central Asia. The word entered English in the 14th century through Latin, as European scholars and traders encountered this useful substance through Arabic commercial networks.
Medieval Arabic traders were the middlemen who brought this 'white gold' from remote Asian deposits to European markets, and their name for it stuck! Borax was so valuable for metalworking and glassmaking that it became one of the first industrial chemicals, and the same Arabic-derived name is still on every box of laundry detergent today.
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