Words: seethe, v.

TOWARDS THE end of his splendid The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, Georgius Everhardus Rumphius remarked in the 17th century, in E.M. Beckman's translation, that "although the Ambonese can get real and decent salt from the Europeans, they prefer to stick to their old habits of making a coarse and unseethed salt, called Sassi, which far more resembles hard dark, and ash-grey stones than salt".

Seethe has come to mean solely behaviour, which it acquired in the 17th century, but it originally meant boil, from various Teutonic words which incorporate such diverse meanings as smoky vapour and boiled flesh, and it is from the word that sodden derives, for it could also mean something so boiled down that it is no longer crisp - enough to make one seethe.