tartar

Meaning

Noun

• A red compound deposited during wine making; mostly potassium hydrogen tartrate - a source of cream of tartar.
• A hard yellow deposit on the teeth.
• A fearsome or angrily violent person.

Origin

• From Old French tartre, from Medieval Latin tartarum, from Byzantine Greek τάρταρον, said to be from Arabic دُرْدِيّ, though it is already found in Pelagonius’s Ars veterinaria 46 in the adjective tartarālis, if the reading is correct.
• From figurative use of Tartar.