Category:Niter

Ni"ter, ni"tre, n. Etym: [f. nitre, l. nitrum native soda, natron, Gr. nit, natr natron. Cf. Natron.]

1. (chem.)

Defn: a white crystalline semitransparent salt; potassium nitrate; Saltpeter. See saltpeter.

2. (chem.)

Defn: native sodium carbonate; natron. [obs.] For though thou wash thee with niter, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me. Jeremiah 2:22. Cubic niter, a deliquescent salt, sodium nitrate, found as a native incrustation, like niter, in Peru and Chili, whence it is known also as chili saltpeter. -- niter bush (bot.), a genus (nitraria) of thorny shrubs bearing edible berries, and growing in the saline plains of Asia and northern Africa.

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---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Niter - (Proverbs 25:20; R.V. marg., "soda"), properly "natron," a substance so called because, rising from the bottom of the Lake Natron in Egypt, it becomes dry and hard in the sun, and is the soda which effervesces when vinegar is poured on it. It is a carbonate of soda, not saltpetre, which the word generally denotes (Jeremiah 2:22; R.V. "lye").