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In the early days of the American frontier, women used lye soap and often washed their family's clothes in an open stream. These clothes tended to become gray very quickly. Once a month, therefore, the wise housewife would boil her load of wash in a black iron pot. Then she starched the best pieces with a paste, made in her own kitchen. Sometimes she would get her husband's Sunday shirts too stiff. He would then accuse his wife of boiling the clothes so long that they became hard. The phrase hard-boiled has passed into our language as an adjective, used figuratively, to refer to persons.