the.com/steel wool

means A pad of fine, tangled steel filaments used for scrubbing surfaces, smoothing wood or metal, and polishing away rust.

from The 'wool' here is purely descriptive, not botanical — once steel is drawn or shredded into fine threads, the tangled mass simply looks and handles like a fleece of fiber, so the name borrowed from textile language rather than any shared root. Fine-wire abrasives have been made since at least the 1800s, with industrial manufacturing (and the familiar brand-driven version sold for scrubbing) taking off in the early 1900s as metal-drawing techniques improved enough to spin steel this thin.