leap year

26 February 2024

The necessity for adding a day to the calendar every four years is due to the fact that the Earth’s orbit of the sun is not exactly 365 days; it’s closer to 365.25 days. Therefore, about every four years we add one day to the calendar to keep the seasons aligned with the calendar. The current practice of adding in intercalary day to February every four years began with the Julian calendar instituted under the reign of Julius Caesar.

But because the year is not exactly 365.25 days long, the Gregorian calendar, first instituted in 1582, which we use today, does not add an intercalary day in years that are evenly divisible by 100, unless that year is also evenly divisible by 400. So 1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was.

Furthermore, because the earth’s rotation is not exactly twenty-four hours long—it varies irregularly—since 1972, a leap second has been occasionally added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to keep the days in line with the earth’s rotation. Most people don’t notice when a leap second is added.

The use of leap to denote calendrical shifts like this goes back to Old English. Ðæs monan hlyp (the leap of the moon) appears in Ælfric of Eynsham’s De temporibus anni, written c. 993. Ælfric was a Benedictine monk who is widely regarded as the chief prose stylist of the late Old English period. De temporibus anni is his attempt to provide monks and priests with a text on astronomy and the calendar that they could use in to educate themselves and the laity and in combating superstition and myth. Ælfric used hylp in reference to the moon (which needs a day added to its orbit of the earth about every 19 years):

Swa swa þære sunnanb csleacnys acenðc ænne dæg 7 aned niht æfre ymbe feower gear, swa eac þæs monan eswyftnys awyrpðe ut ænne dæg 7 ane niht of ðam getele his rynes æfre embe nigontyne gear, 7 se dæg is gehaten saltus lune, þæt is ðæs monan hlyp, forðan ðe he oferhlypð ænne dæg, 7 swa near þam nigonteoðanf geare swa bið se niwag mona braddra gesewen.

(Just as the sun’s slowness always produces one extra day and night after four years, so also the swiftness of the moon throws out one day and night from the reckoning of its course after every nineteen years, and that day is called saltus lunae, that is the moon’s leap, because it leaps over one day, and the nearer to the nineteenth year, the wider is the new moon seen.)

The use of the phrase leap year itself is recorded by 1387, when it appears in John Trevisa’s translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon:

Þat tyme Iulius amended þe kalender, and fonde þe cause of þe lepe ȝere. Þe Romaynes, as [the] Hebrewes bygone here ȝeres in Marche anon to Numa Pompilius his tyme, and þis Numa putte Ianvier and Feverer to the ȝere in an uncerteyn manere, but þe ȝere was not ful amended to fore Iulius his tyme.

(In that time, Julus amended the calendar and invented the concept of the leap year. The Romans began their years in March, as did the Hebrews, until Numa Pompilius’s time, and this Numa inserted January and February into the year in an uncertain manner, but the year was not fully corrected before Julius’s time.)

But there is good reason to believe that the phrase leap year was in use in Old English, even though it doesn’t appear in the extant Old English corpus. The term hlaup-ár, or leap year, is recorded in Old Norse, and most Norse calendrical terms were borrowed from Old English. So it seems likely that Norse acquired this one from Old English too.

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Sources:

Ælfric. Ælfric’s De temporibus anni. Martin Blake, ed. and trans. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2009, 90–91. JSTOR.

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

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. leap year, n.

Trevisa, John. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, vol. 4 of 9. Joseph Rawson Lumby, ed. London: Longman and Trübner, 1872, 199. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924105745024&seq=263

Image credit: 7.calendar.com, accessed 24 January 2024. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

molybdenum

Fragment of crystalline molybdenum beside a one-centimeter cube of the metal

23 February 2024

Molydenum is a chemical element with atomic number 42 and the symbol Mo. It has been known since antiquity but was generally considered a type of lead or graphite. It wasn’t classified as an element until the eighteenth century. The element takes its name from the Latin molybdaena, a name for a variety of ores containing either lead or molybdenum. It’s ultimately from the Greek μολύβδαινα (molubdaina) meaning lead ore or an angler’s plummet.

In its natural state, molybdenum is found only in compounds with other metals and resembles and has many of the properties of lead and graphite. In its pure form it is a silvery metal with a gray cast. It is commonly used in creating steel alloys.

The Latin molybdaena can be found in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia (Natural History), which was completed in 77 CE:

Est et molybdaena, quam alio loco galenam appellavimus, vena argenti plumbique communis. melior haec, quanto magis aurei coloris quantoque minus plumbosa, friabilis et modice gravis.

(There is also molybdenum, which in another place we called galena; a common vein of silver and lead. These are better the more golden in color and the less leaden; friable and of moderate weight.)

As you can see from Pliny’s description, the ancients considered it to be a variety of lead. And this belief extended into the modern era. The earliest use of molybdenum in English that I have found (there are undoubtedly earlier uses to be unearthed) calls it “black lead.” From John Hill’s 1771 Fossils Arranged According to Their Obvious Characteristics:

Black Lead.

Molybdænum.

Composed of minute, fatty, irregular, and close-connected Scales, staining the hands.

The first person to identify molybdenum as an element in its own right was Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1778.

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Sources:

Hill, John. Fossils Arranged According to Their Obvious Characteristics. London: R. Baldwin and P. Elmsley, 1771, 16. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—from Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.  

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2002, s.v. molybdenum, n., molybdenic, adj.

Pliny. Natural History: Books 33–35, vol. 9 of 10. H. Rackham, trans. 1952. Loeb Classical Library 330. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 34.53, 252–53. Loebclassics.com.

Scheele, Carl Wilhelm. “Försök med Blyerts, Molybdæna.” Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar, 39, 1778, 247–55. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Photo credit: Heinrich Pniok, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 3.0 (US) license.

Valkyrie

21 February 2024

Words disappear from the language all the time. The concepts they represent become less useful or they are replaced by spiffier, newer terms and fade into obscurity and eventual disappearance from all but the largest of historical dictionaries. But occasionally these words are plucked from the fields of the slain and given new life. Such is the case with Valkyrie.

A Valkyrie, in Norse mythology, is a female warrior spirit who selects the most heroic of the battlefield dead and escorts them to eternal life in the warrior-paradise of Valhalla. The word comes from the Old Norse valr, or the “the dead, slain,” and kjósa, “to choose.” So a Valkyrie is literally a “chooser of the slain.”

The Old Norse word had a cognate in Old English, wælkyrie, but in early medieval England the word was used to denote an evil female goddess or demon (e.g., the Furies or the Gorgons), or even a sorceress or witch. While the word gained a foothold in early medieval England, it does not appear that the Scandinavian mythology of the female spirit who selected the best from among the slain warriors did.

The Old English word appears mostly in glosses, but here is an example from The Wonders of East, a description of the fantastic peoples and creatures to found in distant lands. It’s one of the texts in the Beowulf manuscript, copied c.1010. This text uses the adjective wælcyrian. Exactly what the word signifies in this case is unclear, but it means something akin to Gorgon-like or demonic:

Eac þonne þær beoð wildeor acenned; þa deor þonne hy mannes stefne gehyrað, þonne fleoð hy feor. Þa deor habbað eahta fet on wælcyrian Eagan ond twa heafdu; gif him hwylc mon onfon wille, þonne hiera lic-homan þæt hy onælað. Þæt syndon þa ungefrægelicu deor.

(Also, wild animals are native there; when those animals hear a human voice, then they flee far away. The animals have eight feet and Valkyrian eyes and two heads; if anyone wishes to capture them, then they ignite their bodies in flames. Those are incredible animals.)

This Old English cognate survives into Middle English, but it disappears from the language sometime after 1400.

Valkyrie was reintroduced into English in the mid-18th century as tales of Norse mythology began to be studied and translated into English. With this reintroduction, the Scandinavian sense of the female chooser of the slain and the association with Norse mythos came into English.

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Sources:

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

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. Valkyrie, n., walkyrie, n.

“Wonders of the East.” In The Beowulf Manuscript, R. D. Fulk, ed. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 2010, 16–19. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv.

Zoëga, Geir T. A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, reprint 2004, originally published 1910, s.v. valr, n., kjósa, n.

Photo credit: Adolph E. Weidhaas, 1936. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

G-man

Poster for the 1935 movie G Men, starring James Cagney

19 February 2024

To an American, a G-man is a federal law enforcement officer, and the G is generally taken to come from government, but this may not be the case. There is an earlier Irish use of G-man used to refer to police officers of the G Division, the detective division, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. It may be that the Irish usage crossed the Atlantic with immigrants, or it may be that the two usages are etymologically unrelated, arising separately on each side of the ocean. Militating against the Irish connection is that in American usage G-men have always been federal agents, originally treasury agents charged with enforcing Prohibition, not ordinary police detectives.

The G Division of the Dublin police was formed in 1842. Divisions A–F were uniformed divisions patrolling various districts of the city, and the G Division were the detectives. Quickly, however, the G Division assumed responsibility for monitoring and suppressing republican political activities, that is, to say in the parlance of the day, Fenianism.

The earliest use of G-men that I have found, however, refers to ordinary police work. From Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal of 2 September 1872:

A few months ago our city was honoured with a short sojourn of a notorious gang of garotters [sic], whose desperate attacks upon citizens awakened a feeling akin to dread in those whose business required them to be in the streets after nightfall. Thanks to the energetic efforts of our efficient detective force, the depredations of these ruffians were but few; and the G men of Exchange Court—the Scotland Yard of Dublin—daily placed in the dock powerfully-built men of the worst type of English criminals.

A use of G men in relation to suppressing political activities comes in an 1881 autobiography (published anonymously) of republican activist Michael Davitt:

Detective officer Sheridan was directed by his Chief to go over to the Land League offices, in Sackville Street, and tell Davitt that he was wanted in the Lower Castle Yard. Sheridan, at an interval, was followed by half a dozen “G men,” as the occupants of Exchange Court are called in the newspapers, and he confronted Davitt in company with Messrs. Harris and Brennan, two of the traversers in the recent State Trial, upon O’Connell Bridge.

And there is this delightfully written account of a G-man staking out the home of politician and activist John Dillon in Freeman’s Journal of 16 April 1888:

Early on Saturday a detective was posted at the top of North Great George’s-street, and he planted himself with his back to the railings of Belvidere College, where he could command a view of Mr. Dillon’s front door. He was very artistically dressed as an ordinary citizen, but “gave himself away” badly with his gloves and umbrella—no man built to baton Nationalists ever looks quite at home with Supple’s No 9 on his paws, and one of Smyth’s silk alpaca rain-protectors under his arm. He sauntered at intervals up and down the street, then he perused Tit Bits until the third edition of the Evening Telegraph was on sale; as time went on the “last edition” arrived and he again invested, and before he went off duty he had squandered the money of the ratepayers on an “extra.” About 6 o’clock Sergeant 13 C and Constables 94 C and 193 C took up their posts opposite the G man, at whom they stared with a “don’t-know-yer” air that was quite delightful.

American use of G-man can be traced to 1928, referring to U.S. Treasury agents charged with enforcing Prohibition. The earliest use I have found is in a 28 October 1928 Associated Press report of the affairs of Mary Louise Cecilia “Texas” Guinan (1884–1933), an actress and owner of a number of speakeasys. The report uses the term, crediting it to night club slang:

Miss Guinan, stopping over en route to New York where she has an engagement Monday with the “G” men (night club for federal prohibition agents), was moved into invective against California by dispatches lastnight [sic]. These dispatches quoted Marie Prevost of the films as saying Miss Guinan left Hollywood suddenly without paying $800 for a month’s rent of Mis Prevost’s bungalow.

(The character of Guinan on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation is named for Texas Guinan. On the show, Guinan runs the lounge on the starship Enterprise.)

There is a popular myth that G-man was coined on 26 September 1933 by George Kelly Barnes, a.k.a. Machine Gun Kelly. He allegedly said, “Don’t shoot, G-men! Don’t shoot!” as he was being arrested by FBI agents. Kelly may or may not have uttered those words, but he clearly was not the originator of the term.

So is G-man an Irish import or an all-American term? For the moment, at least, we don’t have enough evidence to say one way or the other.

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Sources:

Associated Press. “California Boosters Will Not Be Able to Use ‘Texas Stuff.’” Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), 28 October 1928, 1/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bauerle, Richard F. “Origin of ‘G-Man.’” American Speech, 32.3, October 1957, 232–33. JSTOR.

Davitt, Michael. Davitt’s Life: In Sunshine and Shade. Dublin: W. J. Alley, 1881, 13. Gale Primary Sources: The Making of the Modern World.

Dobbie, Elliott, V. K. “Did ‘G-man’ Come from Ireland?” American Speech, 32.4, December 1957, 306-307. JSTOR.

“Mr. John Dillon and the Police.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 16 April 1888, 5/4. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. G-man, n.

“To All Whom It May Concern.” Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 2 September 1872, 7/6. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1935. Wikipedia. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of the poster to illustrate the topic under discussion.

mendelevium

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907)

16 February 2024

Mendelevium is a radioactive, synthetic chemical element in the actinide series with atomic number 101 and the symbol Md. It has no uses outside of pure research. It was first synthesized at the University of California Berkeley by a team led by Stanley G. Thompson that included Albert Ghiorso, Glenn T. Seaborg, Gregory Robert Choppin, and Bernard G. Harvey. The element is named for Dmitri Mendeleev, the chemist who formulated the Periodic Law and was instrumental in developing the periodic table of the elements.

The discovery was announced at a meeting of the American Physical Society in May 1955, and the 14 May issue of Science News-Letter reported the discovery:

Dr. Ghiorso said element 101 has been given the name mendelevium (chemical symbol Mv), in honor of the great 19th century Russian chemist, whose periodic system of the elements is known to every student of high school chemistry. Mendeleev's system has been the key to the discovery of elements for nearly a century.

The team published the details of the discovery in the June 1955 issue of Physical Review:

We would like to suggest the name mendelevium, symbol Mv, for the new element in recognition of the pioneering role of the great Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev, who was the first to use the periodic system of the elements to predict the chemical properties of undiscovered elements, a principle which has been the key to the discovery of the last seven transuranium (actinide) elements.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially approved the name in 1997 but changed the chemical symbol to Md from the original suggestion of Mv.

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Sources:

“Element 101 Discovered.” Science News-Letter, 67.20, 14 May 1955, 307. JSTOR.

Ghiorso, A., et al. “New Element Mendelevium, Atomic Number 101” (18 April 1955). Physical Review, 98, June 1955, 1518–19 at 1519. American Physical Society: Physical Review Journals Archive. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRev.98.1518.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 3—Rivalry of Scientists in the Twentieth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 12 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09452-9.

“Names and Symbols of the Transfermium Elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1997)” Pure and Applied Chemistry, 68.12, December 1997, 2471–73 at 2473. DOI: 10.1351/pac199769122471.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2001, s.v. mendelevium, n.

Photo credit: unknown photographer, before 1907. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.