I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day.

For such fancies and imaginations, help much to purge away the dross and filth of this our earthly life,' &c.

God beholds our minds and understandings, bare and naked from these material vessels, and outsides, and all earthly dross.

S.N. Hollerith, it was said, graduated from the University of California at Phoenix in 1970 with a degree in Slide Rule Design, and quickly built KTI into a multi-thousand-dollar empire on a foundation of selling maintenance upgrades for DROSS-DOS 8E, a microcomputer operating system that was a subset of CP/M. In 1981, KTI introduced the world’s “first” 32-bit microprocessor, created by piggy-backing two 16-bit chips on top of each other, until it was discovered that, at best, only one of the two chips actually functioned at any given time and, at worst, they spent a lot of time fighting over whose turn it was.

C. L. Coffin had the idea of welding in an inert gas atmosphere in 1890, but even in the early 20th century, welding non-ferrous materials such as aluminum and magnesium remained difficult because these metals react rapidly with the air and result in porous, dross-filled, welds.

He described this as "selling our souls for dross".

This energy generates warmth as it accumulates and becomes an inner fire or inner heat ("candālī") that burns away the dross of ignorance and ego-clinging.

In the Upanishads of ancient India, Truth is Sat (pronounced Sah't), the One Reality and Existence, which is directly experienced when the vision is cleared of dross.