Plural of soap; cleaning agents made from fats and alkali, or television dramas called soap operas.
From Old English 'sāpe,' possibly from Proto-Germanic 'saipōn-' (to drip or pour). Roman soap-makers also influenced the word. The 'soap opera' meaning came from 1930s radio dramas sponsored by soap companies.
Soap literally began as dripping animal fat over wood ash—the oldest recipe almost any human culture discovered independently! Then 1930s marketing genius created 'soap operas' to sell bars to housewives, naming a whole drama genre after a cleaning product.
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