---
title: "Lye"
description: "Lye is an alkaline liquid made by passing water through wood ash, the common laundry cleaner before soap became affordable."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/lye
published: 2026-10-16
updated: 2026-10-16
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Lye

*Lye is an alkaline liquid made by passing water through wood ash, the common laundry cleaner before soap became affordable.*

Lye is an alkaline liquid made by passing water through wood ash. Before soap was cheap it was the most common washing agent for linen, hemp, cotton and wool: the alkali helped release the dirt, and clean water then restored the cloth.

## How was lye used on laundry?

Households soaked cloth in it. A local study of Whitby, Yorkshire, describes wooden tubs used for soaking in an alkaline liquid, usually lye, made from the fine white ash of the hearth. Encyclopedia.com adds that a "lye dropper," a wooden box with holes in the bottom, was fitted over the washtub to feed it.

Soap took over slowly. It was regarded as a luxury for many years, and England taxed it from 1712 to 1853. Encyclopedia.com dates soap's displacement of lye as the main cleaner to the late eighteenth century.

The word stretched with the job. In Mrs. Beeton's *Book of Household Management* (1861), the soaking liquor for greasy cloths is made from unslaked lime boiled in water, left to settle and strained, and she later calls that soaking liquor "the lye."


## Sources

1. [Laundry](https://encyclopedia.com/fashion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/laundry). Encyclopedia.com
2. [Laundry occupations: a case study via censuses in Whitby 1841 to 1911](https://ikfoundation.org/itextilis/laundry-occupations.html). Viveka Hansen, iTextilis (Ikfoundation)
3. [The Book of Household Management (Mrs. Beeton, bound edition 1861), Duties of the laundry-maid, paras 2376-2377](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136.txt). Project Gutenberg #10136

Canonical: https://teazle.art/glossary/lye