I don't like the word potable, nor the word potash-- not that I see potty in it, but there's just something odd about a word starting with "pot," perhaps because it has only one t.
"Portable" now reminds me of "portable soup," which is the closest thing they had to meat boullion hundreds of years ago-- They'd cook down meat broth (and stock, which is to say it was bones and meat in the stew) for half a day until it was just a thick meaty gelatin-- so thick they actually just stored it layed in felt. Throw some into hot water, and you've got instant soup for ailing sailors.
potable!=drinkable
That is, gasoline is drinkable, but not potable.
Gasoline is drinkable?
By that way of thinking,
drinkable == liquid ?
Butch,
By the way, Bernie Shulman's changed it's name to Marc's. This happened quite a few years ago and I still have trouble referring to the store as Marc's. I always thought Bernie Shulman's just had a nice ring to it.
Yeah, I remember that period when it was the awkward "Marc's Bernie Shulmans"...I figured it was head to be just "Marc's" but figured that was too much of a pain to explain about the perrier...
m-w.com says that potable means "suitable for drinking," while drinkable is "suitable or safe for drinking." Not really helpful, so I suspect Eric is one of those staggeringly literal whorfian folks who throws lit matches into 'empty' gasoline cans.