Wood preservation preservation reaching back to ancient Greece during Alexander the Great's rule, where bridge wood was soaked in olive oil. The Romans protected their ship hulls by brushing the wood with tar. During the Industrial Revolution wood preservation became a cornerstone of the wood processing industry. Inventors and scientists such as Bethell, Boucherie, Burnett and Kyan made historic developments in wood preservation, with the preservative solutions and processes. Commercial pressure treatment began in the latter half of the 19th century with the protection of railroad cross-ties using creosote. Treated wood was used primarily for industrial, agricultural, and utility applications, where it
English words of Greek origin words like "metabolize", though composed of a Greek root and a Greek suffix, are modern compounds. Greek and English share many Indo-European cognates. In some cases, the cognates can be confused with borrowings. For example, the English "mouse" is cognate with Greek μῦς /mys/ and Latin "mūs", all from an Indo-European word "*mūs"; they are not borrowings. Similarly, "acre" is cognate to Latin "ager" and Greek αγρός, but not a borrowing; on the other hand, the prefix "agro-" is a borrowing from Greek, and the prefix "agri-" a borrowing from Latin. Many are used verbatim in English texts—"et cetera" ("etc."),