Word: saltpeter

Category:

Description/Reason:

Potassium nitrate (KNO₃), a mineral salt. One of the three key ingredients of {ngat} "gunpowder" alongside {ghav} "carbon" and {no'negh} "sulfur". Has some culinary uses on Earth, but whether it's used in Klingon cuisine is unknown (although note the secondary sense of {ngat} "herbed granulated cartilage" – may this be because it also uses saltpeter as an ingredient?).


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Responses

  1. It would be nice to get more information on how to construct expressions like potassium nitrate, but that would require us to have a much more filled-out periodic table first.

    1. Indeed. I first butted up against this problem seriously while doing the First Contact subtitles: "the atmosphere contains high concentrations of methane, carbon monoxide, and fluorine"; we don't know the word for fluorine yet, and at the time we didn't have carbon yet either, much less any understanding of how chemical names are formed. I ended up copping out and just saying tar SIp law' ngaS muD 😛

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