The curious etymology of the elements
It's not often that the worlds of lexicography and technology collide, but in a video by etymologist [RobWords], we may have found a rare example. In a fascinating 16-minute video, he tells us about the origins of the names you'll find in the periodic table. Here's a video of words you don't need to be on a dictionary team to appreciate!
Etymology is a fascinating study, in which the researcher must disentangle popular etymologies and mistaken homophones to find the true root of a word. Fortunately, in the case of most elements, they have a name given to them by the scientists who discovered them, so their etymologies are rarely disputed.
The etymologies fall neatly into categories, with among them distinctions such as Latin or Greek descriptions, places like the Swedish village of Ytterby which has more items named after it than anywhere else, items named for mythological characters and those named for people.
It shrewdly skims over the distinction between aluminum and a curiously similar metal that Americans call aluminum, because etymologists have a habit of deflecting controversy when linguistic differences color, or even color, people's emotions. Thank you, Noah Webster!
It's an entertaining diversion for anyone who enjoys both science and language, and should remind us that the study of language has as much scientific rigor in its research as any of these.< /p>
Periodic Table of Cupcakes: Institute of History of Science, CC BY-SA 3.0.
It's not often that the worlds of lexicography and technology collide, but in a video by etymologist [RobWords], we may have found a rare example. In a fascinating 16-minute video, he tells us about the origins of the names you'll find in the periodic table. Here's a video of words you don't need to be on a dictionary team to appreciate!
Etymology is a fascinating study, in which the researcher must disentangle popular etymologies and mistaken homophones to find the true root of a word. Fortunately, in the case of most elements, they have a name given to them by the scientists who discovered them, so their etymologies are rarely disputed.
The etymologies fall neatly into categories, with among them distinctions such as Latin or Greek descriptions, places like the Swedish village of Ytterby which has more items named after it than anywhere else, items named for mythological characters and those named for people.
It shrewdly skims over the distinction between aluminum and a curiously similar metal that Americans call aluminum, because etymologists have a habit of deflecting controversy when linguistic differences color, or even color, people's emotions. Thank you, Noah Webster!
It's an entertaining diversion for anyone who enjoys both science and language, and should remind us that the study of language has as much scientific rigor in its research as any of these.< /p>
Periodic Table of Cupcakes: Institute of History of Science, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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