nitrogen

Liquid nitrogen

12 April 2024

Nitrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 7 and the symbol N. It is the most common element in the earth’s atmosphere. The English name is borrowed from French, which formed it as a combination of nitre and ‑gène. The latter lexeme is from the Greek -γενής (-genes), meaning that which produces. Nitre, however, came to French from the Latin nitrum, which Latin acquired from the Greek νίτρον (nitron), which in turn comes from a Semitic root, possibly the Egyptian ntrj, that signified the divine or sacred. Sodium carbonate, or natron, is a drying agent that was used in mummification. So nitrogen is literally that which produces nitric acid.

The first to recognize nitrogen as a distinct gas was Daniel Rutherford in 1772. He called it mephitic air (noxious air):

Per Aërem Mephiticum, quem alii vocant Fixum, intelligo, cum Cl. Prof. Black, singularem istam aëis speciem, quae animalibus lethum infert, quae ignem aut flammam extinguit, et quae a calce viva ac salibus alkalinis avidissime attrahitur.

(By the [term] Mephitic Air, which others call Fixed, I understand, along with Prof. Black, that particular species of air which brings disaster to animals, which extinguishes fire or flame, and which is most eagerly attracted by quicklime and alkaline salts.)

Of course nitrogen is not toxic, and flames are extinguished and animals die not from the nitrogen, but from the lack of oxygen in pure nitrogen environments.

Besides mephitic air, another early name for nitrogen was azote. That term was coined by Louis-Bernard Guyton, Baron de Morveau in 1787:

Dans ces circonstances nous n’avons pas cru pouvoir mieux faire que de nous arrêter à cette autre propriété de l'air phlogistiqué, qu’il manifeste si sensiblement, de ne pas entretenir la vie des animaux, d’être réellement non-vital, de l’être, en un mot, dans un sens plus vrai que les gaz acides & hépatiques qui ne font pas comme lui partie essentielle de la masse atmosphérique, & nous l’avons nommé azote, de l’ɑ privatif des grecs & de ζωή vie. Il ne sera pas difficile après cela d’entendre & de retenir que l’air commun eft un composé de gaz oxigène & de gaz azotique.

(In these circumstances we did not believe we could do better than to focus on this other property of phlogistoned air, which it manifests so noticeably, of not supporting the life of animals, of being truly non-vital, to be, in a word, in a truer sense than the acid and hepatic gases which do not, like it, form an essential part of the atmospheric mass, and we have named it azote, from the privative ɑ of the Greeks and of ζωή life. After that, it will not be difficult to understand and remember that common air is a compound of oxygen gas and azotic gas.)

The name nitrogen, or rather nitrogène in the original French, was coined by Jean-Antoine Chaptal in 1790:

Il me paroît donc, que la dénomination gaz azote n’eft point établie d’après les principes qu’on a adoptés, et que les noms donnés aux diverses substances dont ce gaz forme un des élémens s`éloignent également des principes de la nomenclature. Pour corriger la no menclature sur ce point, il n’est question que de substituer à ce mot une dénomination qui dérive du systême général qu’on a suivi, et je me permettrai de proposer celle de gaz nitrogène: d’abord elle est déduite d’une propriété caractéristique et exclusive de ce gaz qui forme le radical de l’acide nitrique.

(It therefore appears to me that the name azote gas is not established according to the principles that have been adopted, and that the names given to the various substances of which this gas forms one of the elements also move away from the principles of nomenclature. To correct the nomenclature on this point, it is only a question of substituting for this word a name which derives from the general system that we have followed, and I would allow myself to propose that of nitrogen gas: first of all it is deduced of a characteristic and exclusive property of this gas which forms the nitric acid radical.)

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Sources:

Chaptal, Jean-Antoine. Élémens de Chimie, vol. 1. Montpellier: Jean-François Picot, 1790, lx–lxi. HathiTrust Digital Library.

De Morveau, Louis-Bernard Guyton. “Le Mémoire sur le Développement des Principes de la Nomenclature Méthodique.” In Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Antoine Lavoisier, Claude Louis Bertholet, and Antoine-François de Fourcroy. Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique. Paris: Cuchet, 1787, 26–74 at 36. 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, December 2003, s.v. nitrogen, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. azote, n.

Rutherford Daniel. Dissertatio inauguralis de aere fixo dicto, aut mephitico. Edinburgh: Balfour and Smellie, 1772, 3. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit: Robin Müller, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

boss

Bruce Springsteen in concert in East Germany, 19 July 1988

10 April 2024

The word boss has many different meanings with many different etymologies, but most of these senses of the word are uncommon or archaic. The dominant meaning of boss is that of a supervisor or person in charge. That sense comes from the Dutch baas, brought into English via the Dutch settlement of New Netherlands along the Hudson River valley in what is now New York. Besides the supervisory meaning, the Dutch word has an older, more familial sense of uncle, which makes the word related to the German Base, meaning cousin, and its Old High German forebear basa, meaning aunt. So the word probably went from meaning respected elder who should be obeyed to that of a supervisor.

The earliest use of boss in English that I know of was recorded in Maximilian Schele de Vere’s 1872 Americanisms, although I have been unable to find the source he quotes. That source is M. Philipse’s 1679 Early Voyage to New Netherlands. The Philipse family was a prominent one in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, but I can’t identify which member of that family this is, nor have I found a copy of the said book. As quoted by Schele de Vere, the passage reads:

Here they had their first interview with the female boss or supercargo of the vessel.

The first verifiable use of the word that I know of is in a 26 May 1806 letter by Washington Irving, who with his stories of the early nineteenth-century New York records many of the first uses of Dutch words borrowed into English. The opening of the letter reads:

I have just received your most welcome lines of the 24th; and being immediately sent out on an errand, I amused myself with reading them along the street; the consequence was, I stumbled twice into the gutter; overset an old market-woman, and plumped head and shoulders into the voluminous bosom of a fat negro wench, who was sweating and smoking in all the rankness of a summer heat. I was stopped two or three times by acquaintances to know what I was laughing so heartily at; and by the time I had finished the letter, I had completely forgotten the errand I was sent on; so I had to return, make an awkward apology to boss, and look like a nincompoop.

Of course, no discussion of boss would be complete with mentioning The Boss, that is the man, himself, Bruce Springsteen. The musician has been known by that moniker since at least 1976. From an article about “Southside” Johnny Lyon in Trenton, New Jersey’s Sunday Times Advertiser of 27 June 1976:

A recent Village Voice article drew some highly negative comparison’s [sic] between Lyon and Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen. The author didn’t much care for their music either.

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Sources:

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. boss, n.2.

Irving, Washington. Letter to Gouveneur Kemble, 26 May 1806. In The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. 1, Pierre M. Irving, ed. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1864, 170–71. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. boss, n.6, boss, v.2, bossy, adj.2.

Philipse, M. Early Voyage to New Netherlands (1679). Quoted in Maximilian Schele de Vere. Americanisms. New York: Charles Scribner, 1872, 91. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Sauter, Eric. “Southside Johnny and the Talk of Asbury Park.” Sunday Times Advertiser (Trenton, New Jersey), 27 June 1976, This Week Magazine 8–10 at 10.

Image credit: Thomas Uhlemann, 1988. Wikimedia Commons. Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license.

pill / the Pill

8 April 2024

A pill is a tablet or other such mass containing a drug intended to be swallowed. The pill is an oral contraceptive. The definite article underscores the revolutionary nature of reliable oral contraception. With the pill, women for the first time could exercise their reproductive autonomy, opening up opportunities in higher education and careers that unplanned pregnancies would otherwise prevent. It quite literally changed society.

The English word pill ultimately comes from the Latin pilula, meaning little ball or pellet. The exact route into English, however, is unknown. It could be a borrowing directly from Latin and subsequent clipping. It could be from the Middle French pillule, the Middle Dutch pille, the Middle High German pille, or some combination of any or all of these.

The first known appearance in English is in a translation of Lanfranc of Milan’s Chirugia Magna, a treatise on surgery and medical techniques. The translation dates to some time before the year 1400. The section of Lanfranc’s book about treating cataracts has this:

Þe patient mote absteine him fro sopers & fro al maner fruitis þat engendriþ moistnes saue he schal vse hote þingis, & he schal ofte be purgid wiþ pillis cochie rasis; þat is þe beste þing laxatif þat mai be for iȝen.

(The patient must abstain from dinners and from all manner of fruits that engender moistness, save he shall use hot things, and he shall often be purged with cochie rasis pills; that is the best laxative that there is for the eyes.)

Exactly what cochie rasis is isn’t known; rasis would indicate it is some kind of resin. And in this case laxative probably has nothing to do with the bowels but is rather used more generally to refer to a substance that causes the body to expel bad humors, in this case perhaps through tears.

Pills have been used in anglophone medicine ever since. But the pill (often capitalized, the Pill, especially in early use) refers to an oral contraceptive. The earliest use of pill in this sense that I have found is from a United Press syndicated story of 7 November 1950. Note that the use of pill here is still generic, a pill, not yet the pill:

Stone said the pill or injection method might render a woman incapable of conceiving a child for a period of several month at a time, but would not later interfere with fertility when conception was desired.

We see this transitional, and rhyming, use of the pill in a 21 October 1956 piece in Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch. It’s not clear whether this is actually a use of the pill or it’s just constructed to be parallel with the will:

Much of the talk about the “P[opulation]-bomb”, has inevitably led to discussion of simple, easy-to-use and effective birth control measure, perhaps in the form of a pill.

But, Cook believes, “you have got to have the will to go along with the pill” in controlling the size of families.

But the following year, 1957, we get an unambiguous use of the Pill, which appears in the book The Human Sum, edited by C. H. Rolph:

Dr. A. S. Parkes, of the Medical Research Council, examines the possibilities of producing “controlled temporary infertility without undesirable side-effects.” He gives a modestly exciting account of the quest now going on, in biological laboratories in various parts of the world,  for what laymen like myself insist on calling “the Pill”; and by this phrase, which, like all men of science, Dr. Parkes would doubtless reject, I mean the simple and completely reliable contraceptive taken by mouth.

1957 is the year when oral contraceptives for women went on the market in the United States. An oral contraceptive for men, however, has continued to be an elusive goal for researchers. We get the first reference to the male pill in a 21 April 1961 article in the Los Angeles Times. I quote the article at some length because it makes some interesting observations and assumptions. First is the accurate (so far) prediction that the quest for a male pill may never come to fruition. Another is the question of whether or not men would use it—women have a lot more at stake when it comes to being assured that their contraception works. (Not to mention that they would have to trust the man when he says he is on the pill.)

A pilot study to determine the efficiency and long-term effects of a new oral contraceptive pill for men has been under way in Los Angeles for the past 10 months.

In an exclusive interview with the physician conducting the tests, the Times learned the pills of the type being studied appear to have most of the characteristics of an ideal contraceptive.

But, he said, it may be years before the pill is released for general use—if it ever is.

The pill probably would be preferable to the recently marketed oral contraceptive for women, provided men would be willing to take it, said Dr. Henry J. Olsen.

[…]

Dr. Olsen, who is clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA Medical School, said the male pill must be taken daily for as long a time as infertility is desired.

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Sources:

Bundschu, Barbara (United Press). “Birth Control Pill May be Available in Five Years.” Cincinnati Post, 7 November 1950, 22/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Diamond, Edwin (INS). “Population Rise Held Dangerous.” Columbus Dispatch, 21 October 1956, 22A/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Lanfrank’s “Science of Cirurgie.” Early English Text Society, O.S. 102. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894, 250. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS 1396.

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

Nelson, Harry. “Contraceptive Pills for Men Being Tested Here; 30 Subjects in Study.” Los Angeles Times, 21 April 1961, B1/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2006, s.v. pill, n.3.; June 2000, male pill, n.

Rolph, C. H., ed. The Human Sum. New York: MacMillan, 1957, 6.

Photo credit: BetteDavisEyes, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

niobium / columbium

“Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe,” Jacques-Louis David, oil on canvas, 1772

5 April 2024

Niobium is a chemical element with atomic number 41 and the symbol Nb. It had been known previously as columbium, symbol Cb. Niobium is a light gray, crystalline transition metal with a hardness similar to titanium and a ductility similar to iron. It is used as a component of steel alloys, in superconductors, and in jewelry as a hypoallergenic alternative to nickel.

The element was discovered in 1801 by Charles Hatchet in a mineral sample found in the British Museum. Hatchet named it columbium as the sample came from Connecticut. Columbia being a poetic name for the United States (see Columbia):

Considering, therefore, that the metal which has been examined is so very different from those hitherto discovered, it appeared proper that it should be distinguished by a peculiar name; and, having consulted with several of the eminent and ingenious chemists of this country, I have been induced to give it the name of Columbium.

But in 1809, William Hyde Wollaston falsely concluded that Hatchett had erred, mistaking the element tantalum, atomic number 73, for a new element. The two elements have similar properties and are frequently found together in ores. Tantalum had been identified in 1802 by Anders Ekberg. Then in 1844, chemist Heinrich Rose “discovered” a new element in an ore that also contained tantalum; he either did not know of or did not recognize Hatchett’s earlier discovery and named it niobium:

Ich nenne dasselbe Niobium und sein Oxyd Niobsäure, von Niobe, der Tochter des Tantalus, urn durch den Namen die Aehnlichkeit mit dem nach letzterem benannten Metalle und dessen Oxyde anzudeuten.

(I call the same niobium and its oxide niobic acid, from Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, in order to indicate by the name the similarity with the metal and its oxides named after the latter.)

The weeping rock (Ağlayan Kaya) in Mount Sipylus, Manisa, Turkey said to be the grieving Niobe; the porous limestone formation appears to “weep” as rainwater seeps through it

In Greek mythology, Niobe is the daughter of Tantalus. She had fourteen children and boasted because of this she was a greater mother than Leto, the mother of the gods Apollo and Artemis. Insulting someone’s mother is never a good idea, especially so when that someone is a god. And to avenge the slight upon their mother, Apollo and Artemis set about killing all fourteen of Niobe’s children. Niobe wasted away in grief and was eventually turned to stone.

Both names continued in use, niobium primarily in Europe and Columbium in the United States until 1950, when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry made declared niobium to be the official name. But seventy-five years later, one can still occasionally find uses of columbium.

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Sources:

Hatchet, Charles. “An Analysis of a Mineral Substance from North America, Containing a Metal Hitherto Unknown” (26 November 1801). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 92, December 1802, 46–66 at 65. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1802.0005.

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2003, s.v. niobium, n.; second edition, s.v. columbium, n.

Wollaston, William Hyde. “On the Identity of Columbium and Tantalum” (8 June 1809). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 99, December 1809, 246–52. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1809.0017.

Rose, Heinrich. “Über die Zusammensetzung der Tantalite und ein im Tantalite von Baiern enthaltenes neues Metall.” Annalen der Physik, 139.10, 1844, 317–41 at 335–36. DOI: 10.1002/andp.18441391006.

Image credits: Jacques-Louis David, 1772. Dallas Museum of Art. Wikipedia. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work. Carole Raddato, 2015. Flickr.com. Wikipedia. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Maritimes / Maritimer / Maritime Provinces / Atlantic Provinces

Map of Canada with the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) marked in red

3 April 2024

The adjective maritime is a mid sixteenth century borrowing from French, which in turn is from the Latin maritimus, an adjective meaning related to the sea.

But in Canada, the Maritimes, refers to the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, not to be confused with the Atlantic Provinces, which adds Newfoundland and Labrador to those three.

The term Maritime Provinces, often clipped to the Maritimes, dates to at least 1847, when it appears in Jennet Roy’s History of Canada:

These provinces are of two classes—first, the Inland Provinces, watered only by great lakes and rivers, and, secondly, the Maritime Provinces. Canada belongs to the first class, and is more extensive, more productive, and more populous, than all the Maritime Provinces united; it is also the principal resort of Emigrants from the Mother Country.

But in early use, which provinces constituted the Maritimes was a bit fungible. So in his book, Roy may have meant the phrase to refer to Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

Residents of the Maritimes are called Maritimers, a usage that dates to at least 1894, when it appears in the 8 October 1894 issue of the Montreal Daily Star:

MARITIMERS TO MEET

Sir William Dawson has accepted the invitation of Dr. A. Lapthorn Smith, president of the Maritime Provinces Association, to be present and address the annual meeting of the Association this evening in the Y.M.C.A. building. Sir William is the honorary president.

The phrase Atlantic Provinces appears in April 1855 issue of Monthly Nautical Magazine and Quarterly Review:

As it is with the coals of the two countries, so it is with the timber. From Nova-Scotia and New-Brunswick, we may obtain the soft bituminous description, while these Provinces require from us, for the use of steamboats and foundries, large quantities of anthracite, which nature has not provided to their hand. […] The demand for pitch pine, oak, locust, hickory, and black walnut, and many kinds of cabinet wood, none of which are found in these Atlantic Provinces, will be greatly increased under the operation of free trade influences, which the late treaty secures.

That last article was from the perspective of the United States, but a use of Atlantic Provinces by a Canadian publication would appear in August 1855 in an article about a proposed confederation of provinces in what was then known as British North America. From the Anglo-American Magazine, published in Toronto:

To some persons, it may seem as absurd thus to connect the Atlantic Provinces with British Oregon, Vancouver or Queen Charlotte’s Islands, as to connect them, in like manner with New Zealand. But it must be borne in mind, that we are considering the question of a union of the British North American Colonies; and the great object of that union would not be attained, unless every part of the British North America—particularly of the continental portions—participated in it.

And there is this in London, England’s Daily News of 14 February 1867, reporting on the formation of the confederation of Canada:

The plan of Confederation which is now found practicable is much less imposing than that which was contemplated two years ago. It does not embrace all the provinces of the Atlantic seaboard, nor British Columbia. Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island have sent no delegates to England, and the new Confederation will only include Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas. It will be remembered that in 1864, when the leading Canadian politicians formed a Coalition Government, the various maritime provinces were negotiating with one another for a close union among themselves, for the furtherance of their common interests. The introduction of the larger scheme, originating at Quebec, founded on a proposal to annex the maritime provinces to Canada, frustrated the design of the smaller, more practicable union, towards which the Atlantic provinces were naturally tending. The new Confederation has not absorbed all the elements of the defeated scheme, but it must either prove so successful as to draw Newfoundland and Prince Edward’s Island into it at some future time, or prove a barrier to the realization of a union dictated by many considerations of policy and interest.

The two Canadas (Upper and Lower Canada or Canada West and Canada East) referred to in the article are what would become the provinces of Ontario and Quebec under the confederation. Rupert’s Land, controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, would come under Canadian control in 1870, becoming the province of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. British Columbia would join in 1871. Prince Edward Island would join the confederation in 1873. The Yukon Territory was formed from a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1898, as would Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1905. Newfoundland and Labrador would join the confederation in 1949. And in 1999 the territory of Nunavut was formed out of a portion of the Northwest Territories. (There is a legal distinction between the provinces and territories regarding from where their administrative powers derive, but it is a distinction with little practical difference.)

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Sources:

Daily News (London), 14 February 1867, 4/3. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, first edition, 1967, s.v. Maritime, n., Maritime Provinces, n., Maritimer, n., Atlantic Provinces, n. DHCP-2.

Hamilton, P. S. “Union of the Colonies of British North America.” The Anglo-American Magazine (Toronto), 7.2, August 1855, 79–87 at 87. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1879, s.v. maritimus. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

“Maritimers to Meet.” Montreal Daily Star, 8 October 1894, 6/3. Newspapers.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2000, s.v. Maritimer, n., maritime, adj. and n.; 1999, s.v. Maritime Provinces, n.; September 2013, s.v. Atlantic provinces, n.

“The Reciprocal Timber Trade of the United States and British North America.” Monthly Nautical Magazine and Quarterly Review (New York), 2.1, April 1855, 82–85 at 82–83. Gale Primary Sources.

Roy, Jennet. History of Canada for the Use of Schools and Families. New York: 1847, 165–66. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Allice Hunter, 2021. Wikimedia Commons. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.