Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 December 4

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December 4

Scouring soap

Sand or pumice may be added to produce a scouring soap. The scouring agents serve to remove dead cells from the skin surface being cleaned. This process is called exfoliation.

What is scouring soap exactly based on this sentence?118.209.242.240 (talk) 16:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I understand the question. A scouring soap is one that contains an abrasive as well as a surfactant. See Lava (soap) for an example. Deor (talk) 17:10, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I was asking what scouring soap is due to this I wasn't sure what this meant: Sand or pumice may be added to produce a scouring soap. The scouring agents serve to remove dead cells from the skin surface being cleaned. This process is called exfoliation.118.209.242.240 (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Does exfoliation help? 2603:6081:1C00:1187:EDBB:F3B3:CAF4:4F4F (talk) 18:13, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Scouring soap is soap that, next to the general cleaning effect of soap, also helps in cleaning by scrubbing – generally by abrasion. The term has not only been used for cosmetic soaps; it has also been applied to soaps for cleaning the house or cookware, such as Wrigley's Scouring Soap. Another, commercially more successful historical example of a scouring soup was Brooke's "Monkey Brand" soap.  --Lambiam 08:03, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• If the word "scouring" is a problem, then this definition seems useful. It states, among other things, that the verb "to scour" means "to rub hard especially with a rough material for cleansing". The addition of rough material (such as ground up pumice) to soap makes it a scouring soap. Does that help? --Jayron32 13:05, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks to me like "to produce" is the problem. A more complete sentence would be "Sand or pumice may be added to soap to produce scouring soap." The sand/pumice is not be added to produce (eg: food products). 97.82.165.112 (talk) 14:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

A typical English speaker would not make that mistake. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:17, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

How so is it a problem? Is this sentence also problematic: "To produce a scouring soap, sand or pumice may be added."? Compare "bicarbonate of soda is added to produce a porous or vesicular structure",^[1] "chromium is added to produce stainless steel",^[2] and "yeast is added to produce ethanol".^[3]  --Lambiam 10:28, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I meant to state that the questioner is reading the sentence entirely incorrectly as "Sand or pumice may be added to produce (ignore what follows)." Then, the questioner saw the word "scouring soap" sitting there all by itself and wondered what it was and what it was doing there. This is something that anyone with a basic functioning handle on English could overcome on their own, but that isn't a guarantee that there will be no outliers. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 12:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)