[curiouscat]

Was reading a Trucking Manual for Norther Canada & it had this snippet:

"All haul truck Drivers operating on the Winter Road are responsible for ensuring their truck is
equipped with tire chains, wheel chock blocks, flashlight, reflective traffic triangles, tool kit,
methyl hydrate, a roll of heavy mil poly plastic and spill pads. "

Methyl hydrate? That's methanol, right? Why would they use such atypical nomencleture! Is this common?

[billnotgatez]

Maybe the same reason we have the term muriatic acid for Hydrochloric acid?

I most always get puzzled looks when I say
 I just drank some ethanol
rather than saying
 I just drank some alchohol
maybe I should be saying
 ethyl hydrate

I just got corrected for not saying propanone for Acetone recently.
Now why doesn't my spell check like propanone?

[Xenonman]

Ever heard about this dangerous thing known as dihydrogen monoxide? 
In all seriousness, it's fun to call compounds by unfamiliar-yet-valid names. It allows you to not be fooled when someone uses a strange name for any purpose, like in the phrase above.

This one has a funny name  . Had I practiced with strange names more, I wouldn't have tried naming this as an ester.

[billnotgatez]

I usually use Hydrogen hydroxide
HOH
for Dihydrogen monoxide
H₂O

[Xenonman]

Ethyl-ethyl sounds weirder than ethyl ethane . I like buthyl hydride a bit more.

[DrCMS]

I assume they called it methyl hydrate because they did not want the trucker to see a methanol label and think "methanol ethanol hey they're almost the same I'll try drinking some"