Affixes

This ending forms specialist names for soil types. Examples are vertisol (from vertical), a clayey soil that forms deep vertical cracks on drying; palaeosol (US paleosol), a stratum or soil horizon which was formed as a soil in a past geological age (Greek palaios, ancient); and mollisol, a soil of temperate grassland with a dark, humus-rich surface layer (Latin mollis, soft). One common term of this type, podzol, an infertile acidic soil with an ash-like leached subsurface layer, actually derives from Russian (pod, under, plus zola ashes), but is often spelled podsol to match the others.

Other words ending in ‑sol come from several sources: in aerosol, cytosol, hydrosol, and plastisol the ending is the word sol (from the first element of solution), indicating a fluid suspension of a colloidal solid in a liquid; in cortisol and creosol it is really ‑ol, but happens to be preceded by s; in parasol the last element is Latin sol, sun.