When an athlete exercises, she sweats so that the droplets of salty water on her skin will carry away heat as they evaporate. The same principle cools water in the Arabic vessel known as the alcarraza, a pitcher made of porous earthenware: while suspended in a shady, draughty location, a small amount of the water in the vessel oozes through its surface and evaporates, thus cooling the remaining contents. Likewise, before the advent of refrigeration in America, a household jar of lemonade was often kept cool by swaddling it in a damp cloth. The word alcarraza—which in Arabic literally means the pitcher—was adopted into English in the early nineteenth century.