Word.ws English Dictionary

tar-water

tar-water is the alternative form of tar water.

Meaning of tar water

Noun

tar water (countable and uncountable, plural tar waters)

  1. (historical) A cold infusion of tar in water, once used as a medicine for chest complaints.
    • Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter II, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 22

Forms of tar-water

pluraltar-waters

Questions about tar-water

What is tar-water the alternative form of?
Tar-water is the alternative form of tar water.

Words near tar-water in the dictionary

  1. tar-boil
  2. tar-boils
  3. tar-brush
  4. tar-brushes
  5. Tar-Vabriga
  6. tar-water
  7. tara
  8. Tara fern
  9. Tara ferns
  10. tara gum
  11. tara gums

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tar-water (page history and authors); tar water (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “tar-water.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tar-water. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.