ash-hopper

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical: a large container in which water was passed through wood ashes to make lye

   Rainwater drained through the ash-hopper and carried the lye into a kettle below.

A compound of ash + hopper. On nineteenth-century farms, the hopper held wood ashes while water leached alkaline salts from them; the resulting lye was commonly used to make soft soap.

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