borax

From Middle English boras, from Anglo-Norman boreis, from Medieval Latin baurach (“borax”), from Arabic بَوْرَق‎ (bawraq), from Middle Persian bwlk' (bōrag), which yielded Persian بوره‎ (bure).

borax (usually uncountable, plural boraxes or boraces)

1. A white or gray/grey crystalline salt, with a slight alkaline taste, used as a flux, in soldering metals, making enamels, fixing colors/colours on porcelain, and as a soap, etc.
2. (chemistry) The sodium salt of boric acid, Na₂B₄O₇, either anhydrous or with 5 or 10 molecules of water of crystallisation; sodium tetraborate.
3. (sometimes attributive) Cheap or tawdry furniture or other works of industrial design.
   • 1977, Harlan Ellison, Jeffty is Five

     Furniture isn't made to last thirty years or longer because they took a survey and found that young homemakers like to throw their furniture out and bring in all new, color-coded borax every seven years.

• E285 when used as a preservative

borax (third-person singular simple present boraxes, present participle boraxing, simple past and past participle boraxed)

1. (transitive) To treat with borax.

• David Barthelmy (1997–2023), “Borax”, in Webmineral Mineralogy Database.
• “borax”, in Mindat.org‎, Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, 2000–2023.
• borax at the Free Dictionary

From French borax.

borax n (uncountable)

1. borax