Pronounced: KEN-tish fire, noun
Notes: I have not heard this phrase
Yesterday’s word
The word saponaceous means “resembling or having the qualities of soap”
First usage
Our word came into English in the early 1700s
Background / Comments
Our word came from the New Latin word saponaceus (soapy), which came from the Latin word sapon, which is a stem of sapo (soap). The original meaning was for soapy things found in nature, such as aloe gel. In the 1800s, our word began to be used to describe people having a slippery, evasive, or elusive characters.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 