beryl / beryllium

Three samples of beryl, from left to right morganite, aquamarine, and emerald

3 March 2023

Beryllium is a lightweight, gray metal that is strong and brittle. One of the lightest elements, it has an atomic number of four. Its symbol is Be. The name comes from beryl, a gemstone that contains the metal that has been known since antiquity. In Latin it is beryllus, which is borrowed from the Greek βήρυλλος. In Farsi and Arabic, it is ballur, بلور and كريستال, respectively. Beril appears in Anglo-Norman by the early twelfth century and then makes its way into Middle English by the end of the thirteenth.

Ancient sources are not precise in the usage of beryl, and in those writings the word can refer to a variety of similar stones. Today, beryl refers to a variety of minerals, all composed of beryllium aluminum silicate, including the gemstones aquamarine, emerald, heliodor, and morganite. And in medieval Latin, beryllus could also mean a crystal and even an eyeglass, hence the present-day German Brille for such a pair.

While the stone was well known, the metal we know as beryllium was not identified until 1798, when chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin isolated beryllium oxide from the stone. He published his results in the Annales de Chimie, and the editors of that journal dubbed the oxide glucine on account of its sweet taste (as late as the twentieth century, it was a common practice for chemists to actually taste the materials they were working with and characterize them by that sense):

La propriété la plus caractéristique de cette terre, confirmée par les dernières expériences de notre collègue, étant de former des sels d’une saveur sucrée, nous proposons de l’appeler GLUCINE.

(The most characteristic property of this earth, confirmed by the latest experiments of our colleague, being to form salts of a sweet flavor, we propose to call it GLUCINE.)

Throughout the nineteenth century, glucine and glucina were the common names for beryllium oxide. In 1808, British chemist Humphry Davy proposed naming the element glucium:

Had I been so fortunate as to have obtained more certain evidences on this subject, and to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium.

But four years later Davy proposed changing it to glucinum, an analogous change to what he did with aluminum:

8. Glucinum.

1. There is an earth which was discovered by Vauquelin in 1798, called glucine, or glucina. It may be obtained from the beryl or the emerald, by the following process […] There is great reason to believe that glucina is a compound of a peculiar metallic substance, which may be called glucinum, and oxygene.

But names based on beryl were also in use. Because other oxides, in particular yttrium oxide, were also sweet tasting, in 1802 Martin Klaproth proposed calling it Beryllina:

Um daher keine Verwechselung derselben mit der Yttererde zu veranlassen, würde es vielleicht gerathen seyn, jenen Namen Glykine aufzugeben, und durch Beryllerde (Beryllina) zu ersetzen.

(In order not to confuse it with yttria, it might be advisable to give up the name glycine and replace it with beryllia (Beryllina).)

Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius was the first to use the name beryllium, and “Beryllium (Glucinum)” with the symbol “Be” appears in a table of elements in an 1814 English translation of his Attempt to Establish a Pure Scientific System of Minerology.

Over time, the name beryllium won out over the sweeter alternatives.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. beril, n.

Berzelius, J. Jacob. Attempt to Establish a Pure Scientific System of Minerology. John Black, trans. London: Robert Baldwin, 118. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dana, James D. A System of Mineralogy, second edition. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1844, 550. Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Davy, Humphry. “Electro-Chemical Researches, on the Decomposition of the Earths.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 98, 30 June 1808, 353. HathiTrust Digital Library.  

———. Elements of Chemical Philosophy. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1812, 203. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. beryllus, n. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Klaproth, Martin Heinrich. Beiträge zur Chemischen Kenntniss der Mineralkörper, vol. 3, 1802, 79. Google Books.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. beril, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. beryllium, n., glucinum, n., beryl, n.

Vauquelin, Louis-Nicolas. “Analyse: De l’Aigue Marine, ou Béril” (“Analysis: Aquamarine or Beryl”). Annales de Chimie, 26, 1798, 169n. Google Books.

Wöhler, Friedrich. “Ueber das Beryllium and Yttrium.” Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 13, 1828, 577. Google Books.

Photo credit: Chris Ralph, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

allege

Drawing of two men in medieval dress on horseback embracing each other. A retinue of courtiers, one holding a cross on a staff, surround them.

1 March 2023

To allege something is to advance a claim, to assert something as fact. It is primarily found in legal contexts. The etymology is quite straightforward, coming from the medieval Latin allegare by way of the Anglo-Norman alleger. It appears in Anglo-Latin writing c.1260.

The word appears in English shortly after, in a version of the life of Thomas Becket found in the South English Legendary written c.1300:

Þo seint Thomas to Rome cam : faire he was onder-fonge;
And sumdel þe pope was anuyed : þat he hadde i-beo so longe.
Men a-coupeden him of þulke trespass: þat the bischopes tolden er,
And beden him ansuerie for is stat : and allege þare-fore þer.
Seint Thomas would op arise : Men beden him sitte a-doun,
And he bigan a-godes name : and schewede þis reason.

(Then Saint Thomas came to Rome. He was well received, and the pope was somewhat annoyed that he stayed so long. Men  accused him of the crime the bishops had charged earlier and bade him to answer for his state and alleged a claim there. St. Thomas arose, though they bade him sit down. He sat beside the pope and argued his case.)

Its meaning has remained largely unchanged through the centuries, probably because of its use as a legal term of art.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. allegger, v.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 2013, s.v. allegare, v. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Horstmann, Carl, ed. “St. Thomas of Caunterbury.” The Early South-English Legendary. Early English Text Society. London: N. Trübner, 1887, lines 1367–1372. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud 108.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. alleggen, allegen, v.(1).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2012, allege, v.1.

Image credit: Matthew Paris (?), c. 1230. London, British Library Loan (from Getty Collection) MS 88, fol. 1v. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

moon

27 February 2023

Total lunar eclipse, 8 November 2022

The moon is, of course, the large rock that is a satellite of planet Earth. Since one can hardly fail to notice it in the night sky, it is no surprise that the word moon is very old. It comes from a common Germanic root, and the Old English word for it was the masculine noun mona. (While mona is a masculine noun, there are rare attestations of the feminine mone translating or glossing the Latin luna, which is a feminine noun.)

We can see the Old English word in Ælfric of Eynsham’s treatise on astronomy, De temporibus anni (Of the Seasons of the Year), written in the closing years of the tenth century:

Soðlice se mona & ealle steorran underfoð leoht of ðære micclan sunnan · & heora nan næfð nænne leoman buton of ðære sunnan leoman; & ðeah ðe seo sunne under eorðan on nihtlicere tide scine · þeah astihð hire leoht on sumere sidan þære eorðan þe ða steorran bufon us onliht · & donne heo upagæð · heo oferswið ealra ðæra steorrena · & eac þæs monan leoht ·mid hire ormætan leohte.

(Truly, the moon and all the stars receive light from the mighty sun and none of them have any radiance except for the radiance of the sun. And although the sun shines under the earth during night hours, yet its light diminishes on the other side of the earth so that the stars above us are illuminated. And when it rises up it overpowers all of the stars and also the light of the moon with its boundless light.)

But mona and its Present-Day reflex moon have other meanings. Moon, for example, can refer to a lunar month, the twenty-eight-day period during which the satellite goes through all its phases. We see this sense in John Trevisa’s late fourteenth-century translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon:

Eusebius in his storie telliþ þat men in þe Est londes hilde Ester day þe fourtenþe day of þe mone of the first monþe, upon what day it evere byfel in þe monþe of Marche.

(Eusebius in his history says that men in eastern lands hold Easter day to be the fourteenth day of the moon of the first month, upon whatever day it falls in the month of March.)

And once Galileo discovered the four major Jovian satellites, moon started to be used more generically to refer to a satellite of any planet, not just the Earth’s. Robert Hooke uses this sense in a letter published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions in 1665:

From this rare Observation, he inferrs [sic] the Proportion of the Diameter of the Satellites to that of Jupiter; and judgeth, that no longer doubt can be made of the turning of these 4 Satellites, or Moons about Jupiter, as our Moon turns about the Earth, and after the same way as the rest of the Celestial Bodies of our Systeme do move: whence also a strong conjecture may be made, that Saturns Moon turns likewise about Saturn.

Hence he also taketh occasion to intimate, that we need not scruple to conclude, that if these two Planets have Moons wheeling about them, as our Earth hath one that moves above it, the conformity of these Moons with our Moon, does prove the conformity of our Earth with those Planets, which carrying away their Moons with themselves, do turn about the Sun, and very probably make their Moons turn about them in turning themselves about the Axis.

And moon acquired more figurative meanings as well. It can also mean something that is unobtainable. Poet John Skelton used it this way in his 1499 poem Bowge of Courte:

And syr in fayth why comste not vs amonge
To make the mery as other felowes done
Thou muste swere and stare man aldaye longe
And wake all nyghte and slepe tyll it be none
Thou mayste not studye or muse on the mone
This worlde is no thynge but ete drynke & slepe
And thus with vs good company to keep

(And sir, in faith why not come among us
To make merry as other fellows do
Man, you must swear and stare all day long
And stay awake all night and sleep till it is noon
You may not study or muse about the moon
This world is nothing but eat, drink, and sleep
And therefore keep company with us)

It can be a verb meaning to engage in listless or aimless activity. A 23 July 1793 letter by scholar and cleric (and grandson of the tea magnate) Thomas Twining uses it thusly:

If you chuse to moon further, by talking with a grave face of things you know nothing of.

And a piece that appeared in the May 1837 issue of Bentley’s Miscellany used mooning to refer to aimless wandering of the streets at night:

His occupation merely consisted in cleaning the whole house, answering the door, running errands, helping to cook the dinner, serving at table, pounding medicines, washing dishes, scouring knives and forks, and blacking shoes, mooning about the streets at night chalking his master’s name, and during his leisure moments he was advised to study physic, and wash out phials and gallipots; for which services he was put upon board wages, at the rate of ninepence per diem.

And Thomas Hardy’s 1878 novel The Return of the Native used the verb to moon in the sense of to indulge in reverie:

“How very ridiculous!” Thomasin murmured to herself in a tone which was intended to be satirical. “To think that a man should be so silly as to go mooning about like that for a girl’s glove! A respectable dairy man, too, and a man of money as he is now. What a pity!”

And moon came to mean something else entirely in the lower registers of the language, that is the buttocks. There is this utterly delightful passage from an anonymous 1756 novel, whose title I cannot resist giving in full: The Life and Memoirs of Mr. Ephraim Tristram Bates, Commonly Called Corporal Bates, A Broken-Hearted Soldier: Who, from a Private Centinel in the Guards, Was, from his Merits, Advanced, Regularly, to be Corporal, Serjeant, and Pay-Master Serjeant; and Had He Lived a Few Days Longer, Might Have Died a Commission-Officer. The passage in question is about Jenny, the wife of a tailor, and her childhood friend Elizabeth, or Betsy, who had married an aristocrat. One could write a book about a close reading of this passage and its class implications:

Jenny, another Comrade, had married an honest Breeches-maker; and whether the frequent Sights of those Objects had rendered here indelicate I can’t say, but she was no so soft in her Discourse as one should have expected from a Play and School-Fellow of Betsey’s:—“Aye, aye! we work hard for our Money; see my Fingers’ Ends here—stitching their filthy Thigh Cases:—But we drink as good Tea as my Lord and Lady.—I don’t suppose my Lord can shew as much ready Money as we—few of them can.—I do suppose when they come down, which I hear will be soon, that my Lady, forsooth, will be for renewing old Acquaintance, to get Credit in our Way. But his Moon Shall never be covered by me or Buck (which, O strange! was her Husband’s Name) ’till they put down the Ready—and no Brummagums.”

A brummagum or brummagem is a counterfeit coin.

And of course, the verb to moon means to deliberately expose one’s buttocks to the public. But this sense did not appear until the mid twentieth century. Here’s an example from the class notes for the class of 1963 in the Princeton Alumni Weekly for 7 July 1964

The class’s entry in the P-rade [sic] was admittedly not among the more colorful. We had no tiger in a cage as did ’39 nor did we have any risqué humor on pickets like ’62. All we had was Tim Callard leading the hard core in a cheer for Princeton and President Goheen and abortive efforts at mooning the Yale team in their dugout.

And like the previous quotation, the fact that this sense of mooning first appears in reference to an Ivy League institution says a lot between the lines.

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Sources:

Ælfric. Ælfric’s De Temporibus Anni. Heinrich Henel, ed. Early English Text Society, O.S. 213. London: Oxford UP, 1942, 12–14. Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.3.28.

Gouldin, David. “Class Notes: 63.” Princeton Alumni Weekly, vol. 64, 7 July 1964, 34. Google Books.

Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native, vol. 3 of 3. London: Smith, Elder, 1878, 276–77. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Hooke, Robert. “Mr. Hook’s Answer to Monsieur Auzout’s Considerations.” Philosophical Transactions, 1, 1665, 74. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

The Life and Memoirs of Mr. Ephraim Tristram Bates, Commonly Called Corporal Bates, A Broken-Hearted Soldier: Who, from a Private Centinel in the Guards, Was, from his Merits, Advanced, Regularly, to be Corporal, Serjeant, and Pay-Master Serjeant; and Had He Lived a Few Days Longer, Might Have Died a Commission-Officer. London: Malachi ****, for Edith Bates, Relict of the Aforesaid Mr. Bates, 1756, 31–32. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2002, s.v. moon, n.1, moon, v.

“The Portrait Gallery.—No. II.” Bentley’s Miscellany, vol. 1, May 1837, 443. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Skelton, John. Bowge of Courte. London: Wynken the Worde, 1499, B.3r–B3v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Trevisa, John. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis: Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, vol. 5 of 9. Joseph Rawson Lumby, ed. London: Longman, et al., 1874, 41. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: David Wilton, 2022.

berkelium

1.7 micrograms of berkelium; the sample is 100 μm across

24 February 2023

Berkelium, element 97, is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive metal. It does not exist in nature and has no practical uses other than scientific research. Only minute quantities of the element have ever been produced.

The element was first synthesized on 19 December 1949 by Stanley Gerald Thompson, Albert Ghiorso, and Glenn T. Seaborg at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California (now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.) Public announcement of the discovery was made on 17 January 1950. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, 37-year-old professor of chemistry at the university, said it probably would be named Berkelium in honor of the city of Berkeley. The element was discovered December 19 but its announcement withheld pending necessary approval by the Atomic Energy Commission.

(The Chronicle was in possession of the Element 97 story for some days, but because of security considerations elected to hold publication until official announcement yesterday by the University of California.)

Publication of the find in the journal Physical Review followed in March 1950:

It is suggested that element 97 be given the name berkelium (symbol Bk), after the city of Berkeley, in a manner similar to that used in naming its chemical homologue terbium (atomic number 65) whose name was derived from the town of Ytterby, Sweden, where the rare earth minerals were first found.

Some sources say the element is named for the University of California located in Berkeley and not the city itself. That is technically incorrect, but making the distinction is a form of pedantic hair splitting.

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Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2019, s.v. berkelium, n.

Thompson, S.G., A. Ghiorso, and G.T. Seaborg. “Element 97” (23 January 1950). Physical Review, 77.6, 15 March 1950, 838. Physical Review Journals Archive.

“UC Produces Another New Element.” San Francisco Chronicle, 17 January 1950, 11. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 1971. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

break a leg

22 February 2023

Among performers, it’s considered unlucky to wish someone good luck before they go on stage, so instead one says, break a leg. The sentiment clearly arises out of a desire not to jinx a performance, but why break a leg is the specific expression of this desire is a bit mysterious. Theatrical use of the phrase doesn’t appear until the mid twentieth century and is American in origin. But there are older and non-American uses of the phrase in other contexts.

One possible, but by no means certain, explanation is that it is a translation of and variation on the German Hals- und Beinbruch!, literally meaning “[broken] neck and broken leg.” The German phrase appears in hunting jargon by 1902 and had spread to the theater by 1913.

The earliest recorded use of the English phrase, in this case break your leg, is by Irish writer Robert Wilson Lynd in 1921. He is writing about the superstitions of the stage, but mentions the phrase in reference to horseracing superstitions:

The stage is, perhaps, the most superstitious institution in England, after the race course. The latter is so superstitious that to wish a man luck when on his way to a race-meeting is considered unlucky. Instead of saying “Good luck!” you should say something insulting such as, “May you break your leg!”

Breaking a leg would be unlucky for either horse or rider, and it isn’t much of a stretch for a phrase to move from German hunting circles to English horseracing. But since broken legs are common in racing, especially among thoroughbred horses, there doesn’t need to be an explicit connection to the German for the phrase to appear in English.

But there’s a more explicit connection to the German in American romance novelist Faith Baldwin’s 1925 Thresholds. Here the hunting is of a different sort, that of seeking romance:

Presently Paul was back with the slender stemmed glasses, and the pale golden bubbles danced at the crystal brims.

“Glück aŭf [sic], Kinder!”

It was Anne’s voice, high and clear. Rupert said, smiling a little:

“Isn’t that a Teutonic expression employed before the chase?”

“Not exactly. I believe that would be bad luck or something. You say, ‘I hope you break a leg’—or your neck—or some such hope of calamity.”

[Oddly, the Oxford English Dictionary states that evidence for the German connection “appears to be lacking,” yet that dictionary’s first citation of the phrase is the one above, one that clearly provides just such evidence.]

The earliest documented connection of break a leg to the theater is in Edna Ferber’s 1939 A Peculiar Treasure:

And when that grisly night of the dress rehearsal finally comes round, and the strange figures enter the dim auditorium and grope for seats and mumble and creep about and you make out the dressmaker and the dressmaker’s assistant and the girl from Bergdorf’s (the star’s clothes) and the girl from Saks’ (the ingénue’s) and the friend of the management, and somebody’s uncle,  and all the understudies sitting in the back row politely wish the various principals would break a leg—it is then that everything goes suddenly completely and inextricably wrong and you realize that tomorrow night is just twenty-four hours away.

But again, the evidence here is tenuous. It’s not clear if the understudies are uttering “break a leg” out loud and feigning a good-luck wish or if they are silently hoping the lead literally break a leg and be unable to perform so they have a chance to go on stage.

The earliest unequivocal use of break a leg in a theatrical context that I’m aware of is in West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette of 29 May 1948:

Superstitions of the stage are numerous and many are peculiar to individual actors and actresses. That it is bad luck to whistle in a dressing room is a widely accepted belief. Another is that one actor should not wish another good luck before a performance but say instead “I hope you break a leg.”

And there is this 1951 column by theater critic and newspaper columnist Leonard Lyons:

TRADITION: The next time I saw Miss Truman on a platform was at the Runyon Fund’s special performance of “Guys & Dolls,” where she served as the fund’s hostess for the evening. I, as vice-president of the fund, was to introduce her from the stage. We stood in the wings at the Forty-sixth Street theatre, and when my cue came and started to walk onstage, I heard her call to me, “Break a leg.” … I wheeled, in disbelief at what I’d heard, and she repeated: “Break a leg.” … She later explained this superstition among concert artists—that it really means Good Luck.

While it’s clear that the expression and superstition is older than this column, it is likely not all that much older in theatrical circles. Since Lyons was well acquainted with the ways of the theater, the fact that he was unaware of the expression indicates that it was probably not yet in widespread use among actors when he wrote this. (Lyons was quite famous in his day, but is largely forgotten by the general public nowadays, though his son, film critic Jeffrey Lyons, is familiar to many today.)

Thus, the expression break a leg, used to wish a performer good luck, seems to only date to the mid twentieth century, and it seems to have arisen in American theatrical circles. It may have older connections to the use of the phrase in horseracing or hunting and more specifically to the German Hals- und Beinbruch, but the American theatrical usage may just as easily have arisen spontaneously and independently, either to avoid a jinx or as a joking expression uttered by an understudy to the lead.

But like many such terms, break a leg has spawned any number of false or unsupported explanations, unsubstantiated speculations that are touted as fact. A few of these purported explanations are as follows:

• It arises from bowing or bending the knee, breaking the crease of one’s trousers during a curtain call after a successful performance.

• Curtains on either side of the stage were called legs (I’m unaware of this term for stage curtains, but it might exist), and one had to pass them to make curtain call after a successful performance.

• Actor Sarah Bernhardt had her leg amputated in 1915 and to wish someone that is to hope they emulate her success on stage. Why anyone would make this association is mysterious, but such speculations often are nonsensical.

• And perhaps the most commonly recited explanation of all is that the phrase comes from the fact that John Wilkes Booth broke his leg jumping onto the stage after assassinating President Lincoln. Booth did indeed break his leg doing so, but there is no connection between the assassination and the expression of good luck.

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Sources:

“Ask the Gazette.” Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), 29 May 1948, 4. NewspaperArchive.com. [The database’s metadata lists it as page 5.]

Baldwin, Faith. Thresholds. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1925, 74. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Break a Leg.” The Phrase Finder. No date.

Ferber, Edna. A Peculiar Treasure. New York: Doubleday, Doran 1939, 354.

Lynd, Robert Wilson. “A Defense of Superstition.” The Living Age, 5 November 1921. 427. Originally published in the New Statesman, 1 October 1921. Google Books.

Lyons, Leonard (Post-Hall Syndicate). “Broadway Medley.” San Mateo Times (California), 28 August 1951, 16. NewspaperArchive.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2016, s.v. leg, n.

Quinion, Michael. “Break a Leg.” World Wide Words, 2 May 2015.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.