Creosote that creosote contained a mixture of creosol and guaiacol. Later investigations by Gorup-Besanez, A.E. Hoffmann, and Siegfried Marasse showed that wood-tar creosote also contained phenols, giving it a feature in common with coal-tar creosote. Historically, coal-tar creosote has been distinguished from what was thought of as creosote proper—the original substance of Reichenbach's discovery—and it has been referred to specifically as "creosote oil". But, because creosote from coal-tar and wood-tar are obtained from a similar process and have some common uses, they have also been placed in the same class of substances, with the terms "creosote" or "creosote oil" referring to
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."),