uranium / pitchblende / yellowcake

Photo of a pair of hands, wearing orange rubber gloves and holding a disc of gray metal

A disc of highly enriched uranium processed at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee

21 April 2023

Uranium, chemical symbol U and atomic number 92, is a silvery-gray, radioactive metal. It is the heaviest of the naturally occurring elements. Uranium-238 is the most common isotope, comprising 99% of the uranium found on earth. Uranium-235, obtained through processing U-238, is highly fissionable and can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. Hence it is used in power plants and nuclear weapons.

Uranium was discovered in 1789 by chemist Martin Klaproth in pitchblende. Klaproth originally dubbed it uranit, or uranite in English, after the newly discovered planet Uranus:

Bis zur etwanigen Auffindung eines noch ſchicklichern, lege ich ihr den Namen Uranit bey; welchem Namen ich, nach dem Beyspiel der alten Philosophen, von einem Planeten, nehmlich von dem jungstentdeckten, dem Uranus, entlehne,

(Until I find something even more suitable, I will give it the name uranite, which I borrow after the example of the ancient philosophers from a planet, specifically from the most recently discovered one, Uranus.)

By the following year, Klaproth had amended the name to uranium to conform to the usual nomenclature of metals. But it was later revealed that Klaproth had not actually obtained pure uranium, and what he discovered was in fact uranium oxide. The first chemist to obtain metallic uranium was Eugène Melchior Peligot in 1841. Still, Klaproth is generally credited with the discovery of the element.

In later use, into the present day, uranite (also uraninite) has been used to refer to various ores containing uranium, such as pitchblende.

The name pitchblende is a borrowing from the German Pechblende, so called because of its black color, like pitch or tar. The German word is a compound of Pech (pitch) + blenden (to deceive) and appears by 1720.

Pitchblende is the raw ore, straight out of the ground. After initial processing to remove the other substances, leaving mainly uranium oxide, the lightly processed ore takes on a yellow color and is commonly referred to as yellowcake. That term dates to at least 1949.

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Sources:

Klaproth, Martin Heinrich. “Chemische Untersuchung des Uranits, einer neuentdeckten metallischen Substanz. Chemische.” Annalen Für Die Freunde Der Naturlehre, Arzneygelahrtheit, Haushaltungskunst Und Manufacturen, 1789, 2:387–403 at 400. Münchener Digitalisierungs Zentrum Digitale Bibliothek.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1.” Foundations of Chemistry, 1 November 2022.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. uranium, n., uranite, n.; June, 2006, pitchblend, n.; January 2018, yellowcake, n.

Photo credit: US Department of Energy, 1996(?). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

caucus

A crowd of people in large meeting room. Signs reading “Obama ’08” and “John Edwards 08” are at the front of the room.

Scene from the 2008 Iowa presidential caucus

19 April 2023

Caucus is an originally American political term. In current use it usually refers to one of two things: either an organized faction within a legislature to plan legislation or strategy or a meeting to choose nominees for election to public office. It can also be a verb meaning to engage in such activities. The origin of the word, however, is unknown, but it seems to have arisen in Massachusetts political circles.

There are a few scattered uses of the word in the 1760s. It first appears with the spelling corcas in a 5 May 1760 piece in the Boston Gazette:

Whereas it is reported, that certain Persons, of the modern Air and Complexion, to the Number of Twelve at least, have divers Times of late been known to combine together, and are called by the Name of the New and Grand Corcas, tho’ of declared Principles directly opposite to all that have been heretofore known; And whereas it is vehemently suspected, by some, that their Design is nothing less, than totally to overthrow the ancient Constitution of our Town-Meetings, as being popular and mobbish; and to form a Committee to transact the whole Affairs of the Town for the future.

A 1762 letter by Massachusetts lawyer Oxenbridge Thacher to Benjamin Prat, the chief justice of New York, uses the compound corkusmen:

I very often think of [the] saying of Nepos, prudentiam quondam esse divinationem [foresight is a sort of divination]; & with respect to you we daily see many of your predictions accomplished respecting the connections & discords of our politicians, corkusmen, plebeian tribunes, &ca., &ca.

(Thacher misquotes Cornelius Nepos here. The line actually reads: “facile existimari possit, prudentiam quodam modo esse divinationem” (it may easily be thought that [Cicero’s] foresight was a sort of divination).)

And John Adams’s diary of February 1763 refers to a Caucas Clubb and uses the imagery of smoke-filled backroom where political deals are made:

This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room. There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town. Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock Adams, Cooper, and a rudis indigestique Moles of others are Members. They send Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures. Captn. Cunningham says they have often solicited him to go to these Caucas, they have assured him Benefit in his Business, &c.

(The Adams mentioned in the quotation is Samuel Adams, John Adams’s cousin. Uncle Fairfield is presumably a relative of Samuel Adams, whose mother was a Fairfield, with uncle being a generic term for an older, vaguely related man.)

Adams would again use caucass, this time as a verb, in a 12 May 1776 letter to James Warren, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress:

Who will be your Governor, or President, Bowdoin or Winthrop, or Warren. Dont divide. Let the Choice be unanimous, I beg. If you divide you will Split the Province into Factions. For Gods Sake Caucass it, before Hand, and agree unanimously to push for the Same Man. Bowdoins splendid fortune, would be a great Advantage, at the Beginning. How are his Nerves and his Heart? If they will do, his Head and Fortune ought to decide in his favour.

But caucus starts appearing with frequency, and with the current spelling, in the 1780s. Presumably the post-revolutionary United States with its many newly created elected offices saw a rise in the number of caucuses. For example, there is this satirical piece in the 25 May 1785 Boston Centinel describing a “funeral procession” in which supporters of James Bowdoin “buried” his opponent, the incumbent governor John Hancock. Caucus here seems to mean an organized body promoting Bowdoin’s candidacy:

BRUTUS tarred and feathered in effigy,
A curious figure of GRATITUDE upon Pegasus, with
other Hancockonians in effigy, all to be burnt on
Bacon-Hill this evening.

The CHARACTER of Mr. H——, pinioned, dragged
violently by Malice and Envy: It will be sat up
as a mark, for the Bowdoinites to fire squibs at,
The Genius of Faction in weepers,
President of the caucus, carried on a hand-barrow,
of state,
The Secretary of the caucus, and news-writers, with
the following petition, to Mr. H——k,
which closes the procession.

(Hancock would go on to defeat Bowdoin in the next election, two years later.)

The next year we see the word again used to in the sense of advocating for a candidate to election, or rather advocating against in this case. And here the word has a negative valence. From the Essex Journal of Newburyport, Massachusetts of 5 April 1786:

But whatever his views are, he has no regard to any interest but his own, and thus acts from motives, different from those of his fellow-citizens, and directly against the Interests of his constituents. This being self-evident, my position follows of course, that it is dangerous to elect lawyers to the general Court. I will therefore join you, Honestus, in any scheme to keep them out, whether by caucus, junto, or scribbling.

Other early uses of the word include this from the Massachusetts Centinel of 19 April 1786:

The circumstances that attended the last year’s election of Representatives you will remember. Some of you at least were at the caucus of the north or south end of the town. Having failed in his attempt to croud his father into the Sentate, Ben thought it for the interest of the craft that he or his father should be in the House. Measures were accordingly taken to effect it. Ben attached himself to the body of mechanicks; his brother enrolled himself among the merchants and traders: But it was at that time doubted by most men, whether Ben could, for want of any professional knowledge, as well as on other accounts, be admitted into either body without injuring their reputation. By this arrangement however they had an opportunity of ploughing with both caucusses. They no doubt made the most of it. A conference was held by a committee from each caucus, for the purpose of effecting a union of sentiment and exertion as to the persons to be elected—the result of which was to drop all thoughts of electing Mr. H——k, and to substitute the father of Ben in his stead.

And this from Boston’s American Herald of 12 March 1787:

There is a certain sect of persons among us to whom the character of republicans alway [sic] was, and ever will be odious—In times past they had not confidence enough to shew their inveteracy, but in slanders and base insinuations—in that way they endeavoured to shake the confidence of the people in their old servants of the town—but NOW they boldly and openly avow their anti-republican sentiments and cabal and caucus to turn them out of office.

And finally, this from the Connecticut Gazette of 6 April 1787:

We learn from Worcester, That a grand CAUCUS was held there last Week, by Delegates from Fifty-five towns, who unanimously agreed to recommend it to their towns to vote for the Hon. JOHN HANCOCK, Esq. for Governor.

As to where caucus comes from, we have no clue, although that hasn’t stopped people from asserting various origins. 

The one common assertion that might possibly be true is that it is a borrowing from an Algonquian language. Early American colonists were fond of appropriating the trappings of Indigenous cultures to distinguish themselves from their European forebears. The Chickahominy cawcawwassough, referring to tribal elders, has been put forward as a source. While that is unlikely—an Indigenous word from Virginia is unlikely to have gained a foothold in Massachusetts—it is possible that some northern Algonquian cognate is the source. But if so, no one has come forth with a likely candidate.

Another common story that has some relation to evidence is that caucus comes from a Boston neighborhood named West Corcus. The evidence for this claim is a 19 August 1745 piece published in the Boston Evening Post. The article purports to be from a group styling itself as Association of Lay-Brethren and objects to itinerant preachers, and specifically to the Rev. George Whitefield, holding that only clerics of the established Congregationalist Church should be allowed to preach:

It is accordingly proposed, that there be such a general Meeting, and that it be held on the last Wednesday of September next, at WEST-CORCUS in Boston aforesaid.

But when one reads the entire piece, it is clear that it is satire, not intended to be taken literally. Furthermore, the neighborhood of West Corcus did not and does not exist.

Others claim it is from the post-classical Latin caucus, a drinking vessel. But not only is that Latin word rare, the early pronunciations with / ɹ / do not accord with the non-rhotic Massachusetts dialect. It is unlikely a Massachusetts speaker would insert an / ɹ / into a Latin word that does not have one.

So, we have to chalk this one up to origin unknown.

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Sources:

Adams, John. Diary, February 1763. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1. The Adams Papers, Series 1, Diaries. L.H. Butterfield, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1961, 238. Archive.org.

Adams, John. Letter to James Warren, 12 May 1776. The Adams Papers: Digital Edition. Sara Martin, ed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008–2023.

Bell, J.L. “The Mystery of the Meeting ‘at West-Corcus in Boston.’” Boston 1775 (blog), 17 November 2013.

“Bostonians.” Connecticut Gazette and the Universal Intelligencer (New London, Connecticut), 6 April 1787, 2/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“For the Centinel.” Massachusetts Centinel (Boston), 19 April 1786, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, s.v. caucus, n., caucus, v.

Nepos, Cornelius.”Excerpt from the Book on Latin Historians: XXV. Atticus.” Cornelius Nepos. John C. Rolfe, trans. Loeb Classical Library 467. 316.

Sherwood, Jeff. “Caucus: A Cant Word of the Americans in the March 2019 Update.” Oxford English Dictionary Blog, 18 March 2019.

Supplement to the Boston Evening Post, 19 August 1745. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Supplement to the Boston-Gazette, 5 May 1760. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Thacher, Oxenbridge. Letter to Benjamin Prat (1762). Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 20, 1882–83, 48. JSTOR.

“This Day, the Funeral Procession of the Bowdoinitish Coalition.” Massachusetts Centinel (Boston), 25 May 1785, 2/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“To Honestus.” Essex Journal and the Massachusetts and New-Hampshire General Advertiser (Newburyport, Massachusetts), 5 April 1786, 2/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“To the Free Electors of the Town of Boston.” American Herald (Boston), 12 March 1787, 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

Oort cloud

17 April 2023

Logarithmic diagram of the solar system showing the sun and planets, the heliopause, the position of the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 2013, the Oort cloud, and the nearest star.

Diagram of solar system distances showing the Oort cloud. The scale is in astronomical units (AU) and is logarithmic.

The Oort cloud is a mulititude of icy celestial bodies that is postulated to exist beyond the Kuiper belt and that is the source of long-period comets (i.e., those that have orbital periods greater than two-hundred years). The cloud is named after astrophysicist Jan Oort (1900–1992) who postulated its existence in 1950. But Oort was not the first to do so. He was preceded by Ernst Öpik (1893–1985), who had postulated its existence in 1932. As a result, the cloud is sometimes referred to as the Öpik-Oort Cloud. In his description, Öpik used the word cloud:

If, however, among our observable objects there is a sensible proportion of meteors with R exceeding 10000 a.u., it may be only the result of a very peculiar distribution of meteoric matter at the outskirts of the solar system—a kind of a meteoric cloud, or shell, of a density much higher than may be anticipated from the observed frequency of solar meteors caught on the surface of the terrestrial atmosphere.

(In this paper, Öpik used meteors as a general category that included comets “for the sake of simplicity.”)

While Oort also used the word cloud in his 1950 paper, like Öpik he did not append his own name to it:

From a score of well-observed original orbits it is shown that the “new” long-period comets generally come from regions between about 50 000 and 150 000 A.U. distance. The sun must be surrounded by a general cloud of comets with a radius of this order, containing about 1011 comets of observable size; the total mass of the cloud is estimated to be of the order of 1/10 to 1/100 of that of the earth. Through the action of the stars fresh comets are continually being carried from this cloud into the vicinity of the sun.

The term Oort cloud is in place by 1961, when it appears in an article in the Bulletin of the Astronomical Institute of Czechoslovakia. Given the casual use of the term without explanation in an article that is only tangentially related to the cloud, it would appear that Oort cloud was already in common use among astronomers by this date:

Comets with [cube root of] p < 0.1, not included in Fig. 5, are members of the Oort cloud.

In early use, one also finds the form Oort’s comet cloud or the Oort cometary cloud, as in this article, a 1964 translation of a 1963 Soviet journal article:

On the basis of the analogy between the Lorentz force and the Coriolis force in an inertial system, the equations of hydrodynamics are formulated here for an ensemble of noncolliding particles in such a system. The equations derived are similar to the equations of collisionless magnetohydrodynamics. The evolution of rotating objects (the Galaxy, galactic clusters, meteor streams, the Oort cometary cloud, etc.) can be discussed on the basis of these equations.

The term starts appearing in the popular press in 1973 in articles discussing the comet Kohoutek of that year. This one is from the Christian Science Monitor of 20 November 1973:

Experts speculate that comets originate somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto in Oort’s cloud, named after Jan Oort. The Dutch astrophysicist theorized that there exists a ring of comet-like snowballs in the outer reaches of the solar system. On rare occasions one is nudged out of place and begins falling toward the sun.

The Oort cloud has never been directly observed. Its existence is merely theorized based on the behavior of long-period comets.

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Sources:

Grass, Stephen. “…Astronomers Await This Burning Sphere from Beyond Pluto.” Christian Science Monitor, 20 November 1973, B8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Marochnik, L.S. “Collisionless Hydrodynamics in Inertial Frames of Reference” (translation). In Soviet Astronomy, 8.2, September–October 1964, 202–09 at 202. Original in Astronomicheskii Zhurnal, 41.2, 22 November 1963, 264–73. NASA Astrophysics Data System.

Oort, J.H. “The Structure of the Cloud of Comets Surrounding the Solar System, and a Hypothesis Concerning Its Origin.” Bulletin of the Astronomical Institute of the Netherlands, 11.408, 13 January 1950, 91–110. NASA Astrophysics Data System.

Öpik, E. “Note on Stellar Perturbations of Nearly Parabolic Orbits.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 67.6, October 1932, 169–83 at 181. JSTOR

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2004, s.v. Oort, n.

Sekanina, Z. “Collisions of Comets with Dust Particles in Interplanetary Space” (30 August 1961). Bulletin of the Astronomical Institute of Czechoslovakia, 13, 1962, 155–163 at 162. NASA Astrophysics Data System.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

cæsium / cesium

A silvery, metallic, crystalline structure with dendritic (tree-like) structure within a glass ampule

Caesium-133 crystal stored in an ampule of argon

14 April 2023

Caesium, also spelled cesium, is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal. Its atomic number is 55, and its symbol is Cs. It is the first element discovered through spectrography, when in 1860 Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen identified it through its two distinct lines in the blue portion of the visible spectrum. The following year, when they published their research, they named the element after the Latin caesius or bluish-gray:

Die Leichtigkeit, mit welcher der nur einige Tausendstel eines Milligramins betragende, noch dazu mit Lithion-, Kali- und Natron-Verbindungen gemischte Stoff an dem blauen Lichte seines glühenden Dampfes als ein neuer und einfacher erkannt werden konnte, wird es wohl gerechtigt erscheinen lassen, wenn wir für denselben den Namen Caesium mit dem Symbol Cs vorschlagen, von caesius, welches bei den Alten vom Blau des heiteren Himmels gebraucht wird.

(The ease with which the substance, which amounts to only a few thousandths of a milligram and is also mixed with lithium, potassium and sodium hydroxide compounds, could be recognized as a new and simpler substance from the blue light of its glowing vapor, will make it appear justifiable that if we propose for it the name caesium, with the symbol Cs, from caesius, which is used by the ancients from the blue of the clear sky.)

Kirchhoff and Bunsen did not isolate the metal, however. That was first done by Carl Setterberg in 1882.

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Sources:

Kirchhoff, Gustav and Robert Bunsen. “Chemische Analyse durch Spectralbeobachtungen.” Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 189.7 (1861), 337–381 at 338. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022 (online).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. caesium, n.

Setterberg, Carl. “Über die Darstellung von Rubidium- und Cäsiumverbindungen und Über die Gewinnung der Metalle Selbst.” Annalen der Chemie. 211.1 (1882), 100–116. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Dennis “S.K.”, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

brothel

Painting of four men carousing and groping women in front of a fireplace. To the left, a fifth man is performing a handstand. In the background, a sixth man is taking another woman into bed.

Brothel, by Joachim Beuckelaer, 1562

12 April 2023

A brothel is, of course, a place where prostitutes ply their trade. It is a word that developed within English, tracing back to an Old English root but with semantic and morphological changes over the centuries. The current meaning doesn’t appear until the Early Modern period.

Brothel can be traced back to the Old English root broþ-, meaning to degenerate, contemptible. The root is more commonly found in the verb abreoþan, meaning to fail. That latter verb appears in the poem The Battle of Maldon, which was probably written shortly after 991 C.E. The passage in question depicts the thane Offa attempting to rally the English troops after the death of their lord, Byrhtnoth:

                                    Us Godric hæfð,
earh Oddan bearn,         ealle beswicene.
Wende þæs formoni man,         þa he on meare rad,
on wlancan þam wicge,         þæt wære hit ure hlaford;
forþan wearð her on felda         folc totwæmed,
scyldburh tobrocen.         Abreoðe his angin,
þæt he her swa manigne         man aflymde!

(Godric, the cowardly son of Odda, has betrayed us all. Many a man thought that when he rode away on his horse, on that stately steed, that it was our lord; therefore, the army on the field became scattered, the shield wall broken. May his attempt fail that he put to flight so many men!)

And by the Middle English period we see the noun brethel, meaning a contemptible person, a wretch. And a brethel could be either male or female. It appears by c.1275 in the form breþeling in a poem bearing the modern title of Ten Abuses:

Hwan þu sixst on leode.
King þat is wilful.
And domesmon niminde.
Proest þat is wilde.
Bischop slou.
Old mon lechur.
Ȝunch mon lieȝer.
Wimmon schomeles.
Child un-þeaud.
Þral vn-buxsum.
Aþeling briþeling.
Lond wið-ute laȝe.
Al so seide bede;
Wo þere þeode.

(When you see in a people
A king that is willful;
A judge a bribe-taker;
A priest is wanton;
A bishop a sloth;
A old man a lecher;
A young man a liar;
A woman shameless;
A child unmannerly;
A thrall rebellious;
A prince a bretheling;
A land without law;
Thus said the prayer:
Woe to the nation.)

The modern form brothel appears by c.1470 when William Langland uses it in the A-text of his poem Piers Plowman:

Freres and faytors han founden suche questions
To please with this proude men seththe pestilence tyme;
Thei de-foulen vre fey at festes ther thei sitten.
For nou is vche boye bold brothel and other,
To talken of the trinite to beon holden a syre,
And fyndeth forth fantasyes vr faith to apeyre;
And eke de-fameth the fader that vs alle made,
And craken aȝeyn the clergie crabbed wordes.

(Friars and imposters have devised such questions
To please these proud men since the pestilence time,
They befoul our faith when they sit at feasts.
For now is one boy a bold brothel and another
Talking of the Trinity so as to be held as an authority [or wretch],
And putting forth fantasies that damage our faith;
And also defame our Father that made us all,
And uttering wicked words against the clergy.)

By c.1450, the meaning of brothel had narrowed to one specific type of undesirable person, the female prostitute. The narrowing was probably influenced by the noun bordel, also meaning prostitute.

This sense appears in a Middle English translation of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (Of Illustrious Women). The section on the goddess Venus includes the following lines which tell of so-called “sacred prostitution” that, at least according to Herodotus and Ovid, in book ten of his Metamorphoses, allegedly compelled all women of Cyprus to commit at least one act of prostitution in a temple dedicated to the goddess:

Wyves and maydens also she dydd compel
To vse the flesh in open strumpetry
And ordeyned places therin for-to ly,

The which in Englond stves men do call,
A bordello-howse of swyth vnthryftyness,
To exercise actys venereal
Permytted for this encheson, doubtless,
To avoyde more vnclenness;
And ȝit men deme it in many place elsewhere
To be as son spede of a brothel as theere.

(Wives and maidens she also did compel
To use their bodies in open stumpetry
And ordained places for them to lay.

That which in England men call stews,
A bordello-house of great liberality,
To exercise venereal acts
Permitted for the reason, doubtless,
Of avoiding more uncleanness;
And yet men deem it in many other places
To as readily engage a brothel as there.)

(Historians today generally discount the idea that sacred prostitution actually happened, at least not as imagined in the written sources.)

The compound brothel-house appears by 1521, in Alexander Barclay’s poem The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas:

But suche as be riche and in promocion
Shall haue my writyng but in derisyon
For in this season great men of excellence
Hath to poemys no greatter reuerence
Than to a brothell or els a brothelshous
Madde ignorance is so contagyous.

(But those who are rich and of advanced rank
Shall hold my writing but in derision;
For in this season great men of excellence
Have for poems no greater reverence
Than for a brothel or else a brothel-house.
Foolish ignorance is so contagious.)

And by the end of the sixteenth century the -house was dropped, and brothel had come to designate a place of prostitution. From Henry Smith’s 1592 Satans Compassing the Earth:

I doe verely thinke that some here did come from as bad exercises as the deuill himselfe: and that when they doo depart from this place, they will returne to as badde exercises againe, as the Deuill did: Some vnto the Tauerns, and some vnto the Alehouses, and some vnto Stages, and some vnto Brothels, and some vnto dicing, and some vnto quarrelling, and some vnto cosening.

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Sources:

Barclay, Alexander. The Boke of Codrus and Mynalcas. London: Richard Pynson, 1521, sig.b4v–cr. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“The Battle of Maldon.” In Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record 6. New York: Columbia UP, lines 237b–43, 13. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B.203,

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. breoþan, v.

Langland, William. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, vol. 1 of 2. Walter W. Skeat, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886, A-Text, Passus 11, lines 58–65, 291–92. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. brothel, n., bretheling, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2022, s.v. brothel, n., brethel, n., bretheling, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. brethe, v.

Schleich, Gustav, ed. Die Mittelenglische Undichtung von Boccaccios De Claris MulieribusPalaestra, 144, 1924, lines 803–12, 40. London, British Library, MS Additional 10304. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Smith, Henrie. Satans Compassing the Earth. London: Thomas Scarlet, 1592, sig. B6r. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“Ten Abuses.” In Richard Morris, ed. An Old English Miscellany. Early English Text Society, OS 49. London: N. Trübner , 1872. London, British Library, Cotton MS. Caligula A.ix, fol. 248v. Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse.

Image credit: Joachim Beuckelaer, 1562. Walters Art Museum. Public domain image.