Shampoo

"Don't Buy Shampoo, Get The Real Poo Here Today!!!"

Where does the word "shampoo" come from? Have you ever wondered?

Sham-poo.

I can't be the only person who has been showering and imagined the man who created it thinking "It looks a bit like poo, but, of course, it's not! Let's call it sham-poo!" But, to be honest, it doesn't even look like poo. At least, not if you're healthy.

Or maybe it makes you wonder what cavemen and women used to keep their hair clean.

I'll leave the ponderings up to you.

But if, like me, you are interested in putting your showertime wonderings to rest:
-"Shampoo" is originally a Hindi word, chāmpo, to massage, which apparently is an inflection of cāmpnā, to press.
-The first recorded use in English was around 1762, meaning an Indian Head Massage, usually with some sort of aromatic oil.
-It took around 100 years for the word to be used for "washing the hair" (first recorded in 1860), but only 6 more years for the word "shampoo" to be used as a noun [shampoo as an object] not a verb [to shampoo].
-Intriguingly, the first known shampoo-maker is Kasey Herbert (selling 'Shaempoo' in London), but the first shampoo we would recognise today was made in the 1930s, called Drene.

Not bad for a morning's ponderings! :)