The ability of a substance to remove dirt, stains, or impurities from a surface, especially measuring how well a soap or detergent works.
From detergent + -cy (suffix forming abstract nouns); detergent comes from Latin detergere (to wipe away).
The chemistry of detergency became a science in the 20th century—companies hired chemists to test and quantify how well products could lift grease, leading to modern laundry powder innovations and the term 'surfactant' that changed cleaning forever.
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