de gras

alternative dégras

1. uncountablePurified wool fat (lanolin).

   The oil, when cool, solidifies, and it is sold under the name of “de gras”, or Yorkshire grease.

   1909, Herman Stabler and Gilbert H. Pratt, The Purification of some Textile and other Factory Wastes, (US GPO, 1909) p. 18

   2 more examples

   The crude wool-fat, pure “de gras”, imported by the shipload to this country, principally from Marseilles, free from rosin oil, fish oil and other extraneous fats, selling at about 5 cents per pound, yields an article of as good absorbent power as lanolin, when prepared by the following process: 60 parts de gras is freed from grosser impurities by melting and straining.

   1889, C. S. Hallberg, “On Wool-Fat or Lanoleum”, in Proceedings of the American Pharmaceutical Association at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting, pages 98–9

   ... they could busy themselves greasing the mill machinery to preserve it from muddy water and any consequent rusting, use the barrels of de gras on hand for lubricating hemp. The mill would stink like a sheepfold, but nothing was more water-resistant than a thick layer of wool fat.

   1982, Helen Hooven Santmyer, "...And Ladies of the Club" (OSU Press, 1982) (Berkley edition, p. 1255, Chapter "1913")

   Synonyms: Yorkshire grease