Last week, I shared in this-here blog that I had developed runner’s knee(s). Since the publication, countless readers – okay, maybe three or four – have reached out to inquire about the condition of my knees. I’m happy to report that they continue to improve. Indeed, I’ve been able to slowly resume exercising.
In other news, I’ve also been thinking about methylade, pronounced as muh-thigh-laid.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a primer: the Neosporin of its time, methylade came in a little glass bottle. When one of us younglings would get a boo-boo, an adult would apply methylade to our injury with an eye dropper that came with the bottle.
Apparently, when methylade made contact with skin, the pain was so intense that younglings regretted mentioning said boo-boo to the adults. I don’t remember methylade causing pain, but I do remember that it turned my skin a coppery color. This phenomenon probably eased any pain that methylade might or might not have caused to my sensitive skin.
When I researched methylade, Google directed me to pages devoted to mercurochrome and merthiolate. Both products were banned in the 1990s because they contained mercury. As you might know, mercury poisoning can cause oodles of symptoms including diarrhea, vomiting, seizures, memory issues, and drooling.
Anyway, I’m not sure if methylade was supposed to be mercurochrome or merthiolate, but I’m leaning toward the later. I guess if you squint, plug your ears with cotton, and ignore the letter “r,” then merthiolate could be misread and/or misheard as methylade.
With that in mind, I wondered if the pronunciation was restricted to my family. After all, our late patriarch introduced us to such terms as Kolox, zink, and yemway. So it didn’t seem like a stretch to think that he had created his own pronunciation of merthiolate.
But then I remembered a work-related event I attended approximately six years ago that comprised an audience of Eastern Kentuckians. For a reason I can’t recall, a fellow attendee made a methylade-related joke, which caused everyone within earshot to chuckle. What’s more, thanks to my research, I discovered a few Pinterest posts and one blog that actually referred to methylade by name.
That means it’s not specific to my family. So, why did oodles of folks – definitely more than three or four – start calling merthiolate or, perhaps, mercurochrome, muh-thigh-laid?
This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.
Michelle Goff, mystery writer 
When I’d see that tell-tale copper stain peeking from beneath the Band-Aid on a friend’s skin, I knew he’d sustained an injury just shy of requiring amputation. And yes, “muh-thigh-laid” was the common pronunciation in my neighborhood.
0 Pingbacks