radium

1918 advertisement for toiletries containing radium

19 July 2024

The element radium is a radioactive, silvery-white, alkaline-earth metal with atomic number 88 and the symbol Ra. Its most stable isotope, radium-226 has a half-life of 1,600 years. Radium is particularly toxic in that it is chemically similar to calcium and can deposit in bones, causing long-term exposure to its ionizing radiation. Once commonly used for its radioluminescent properties, because of its toxicity its only applications today are in nuclear medicine.

Radium was formed in French from rad- (from the Latin radius [ray]) +-ium (suffix used for metallic elements).

It was discovered in 1898 by the husband and wife team of Marie Sklodowska Curie and Pierre Curie, who wrote of the name:

M. Demarçay a trouvé dans le spectre une raie qui ne semble due à aucun élément connu. Cette raie, à peine visible avec le chlorure 60 fois plus actif que l'uranium, est devenue notable avec le chlorure enrichi par fractionnement jusqu'à l'activité de 900 fois l'uranium. L'intensité de cetle raie augmente donc en même temps que la radio-activité, et c'est là , pensons-nous, une raison très sérieuse pour l'attribuer à la partie radio-active de notre substance.

Les diverses raisons que nous venons d'énumérer nous portent à croire que la nouvelle substance radio-active renferme un élément nouveau , auquel nous proposons de donner le nom de radium.

(Mr. Demarçay found a line in the spectrum which does not seem to be due to any known element. This line, barely visible with chloride 60 times more active than uranium, became notable with chloride enriched by fractionation to the activity of 900 times uranium. The intensity of this line therefore increases at the same time as the radio-activity, and this is, we think, a very serious reason for attributing it to the radio-active part of our substance.

The various reasons that we have just listed lead us to believe that the new radioactive substance contains a new element, to which we propose to give the name radium.)

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Curie, Pierre and Marie Curie. “Sur une nouvelle substance radio-active, contenue dans la pechblende.” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 127, December 1898, 1215–1217 at 1216–17. 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. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, s.v. radium, n.

Image credit: Radior Cosmetics, 1918. New York Tribune Magazine, 10 November 1918. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

libel

Thomas Rowlandson, 1810, “Libel Hunters on the Lookout, or Daily Examiners of the Liberty Press”

17 July 2024

In present day legal parlance, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, a libel is “a defamatory statement expressed in a fixed medium, esp. writing but also a picture, sign, or electronic broadcast.” It is also a verb meaning “to defame (someone) in a permanent medium, esp. in writing.”

The word comes from the Anglo-Norman libel, meaning a legal writ or complaint, which is from the Latin libellus, or little book. It makes it’s English appearance by the end of the thirteenth century, when it appears in The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester describing events of a century earlier, during the reign of King John:

& after sein Micheles day · þe þridde day he com ·
To douere & þe bissop · of londone wiþ him nom ·
& þe bissop of eli · & þe king sone wende ·
To a maner þer biside · & to hom anon sende ·
Is heye Iustice of is lond · sir · G · le fiȝ peris ·
Þat ȝuf þe erchebissop · oþer eni of his ·
Wolde eni þing · toward him · þat hii sende him libel ·
& esste ek articles · þat nere noȝt to graunti wel ·
Ac vor it nas bote al þe mase · þe erchebissop sone ·
Wende aȝen ouer se · as best was to done ·

[And on the third day after Saint Michael’s day, he (i.e., the archbishop) came to Dover and brought with him the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely, and the king soon went to a nearby manor and soon sent for them. Sir Geoffrey le Fitz Piers is the Chief Justiciar of this land, and that if the archbishop or any of his would have anything with respect to him, that they send him a libel and asked also for items that were not to be granted.]

By the late fourteenth century and probably under the influence of the Latin, libel was being used to mean a small book or short treatise. And by the early sixteenth century, the word was being used to denote a printed and publicly distributed leaflet or pamphlet. Such leaflets were often defamatory and dubbed libellus famosus or famous libels, the famous referring to the fact that they were published and distributed. Here is an early example from a 26 June 1521 letter written by John Longland, the bishop of London, to Cardinal Wolsey about a pair of heretic priests in his diocese:

And noo doubte ther arre moo in Oxenford as apperith by suche famous lybells and bills as be sett uppe in night tymes upon Chirche doores. I have twoo of them, and delyvered the third to my Lord of London. I truste your Grace hath seen itt, whereby ye may perceyve the corrupt mynds.

And by the early seventeenth century libel had acquired its present-day legal definition of a written defamatory statement, as opposed to a slander, which is a spoken defamatory statement. At around the same time, the verb to libel, meaning to make such a defamatory statement, also made its appearance.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Garner, Bryan A., ed. Black’s Law Dictionary, 11th edition, 2019, s.v. libel, n., libel, v. Thomson Reuters Westlaw.

Longland, John, Bishop of Lincoln. Letter to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, 26 June 1521. In Henry Ellis, ed. Original Letters Illustrative of English History, third series, vol. 1 of 4. London: Richard Bentley, 1846, 253. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. libel(le, n.

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

Wright, William Aldis, ed. The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, vol. 2 of 2. London: Stationary Office, 1887, lines 10,227–237, 703. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Thomas Rowlandson, 1810. Wikimedia Commons. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain image.

duke / dukes

15 July 2024

The earliest known appearance of duke in English, from the Peterborough Chronicle entry of 1129

A duke is the ruler of a duchy or the highest rank of nobility below the sovereign. The word comes from the Anglo-Norman duc, meaning ruler or general, which in turn is from the Latin dux, leader or general.

The oldest use of the word in English that anyone has found is in the Peterborough Chronicle entry for the year 1129, probably written shortly thereafter and refers to the papal schism that began in that year:

Þes ilces geares forð ferde Honorius papa. Ær he wære wel ded. Þa wære þær coren twa papes. Se an wæs gehaten Petrus. he wæs munec of Clunni. & weas boren of þa ricceste men of Rome. mid him helden ða of Rome. & se duc of Sicilie. Se oðer het Gregorius.

This same year Pope Honorius [II] died. Before he had been dead for very long, there were chosen two popes. One was named Peter [i.e., Antipope Anacletus II]. He was a monk of Cluny and was born of the most powerful men of Rome. Supporting him were those of Rome and the Duke of Sicily. The other was named Gregory [i.e., Innocent II].

But duke, or more usually its plural form dukes, is also a slang term for the hands, especially the fists. The earliest known record of the slang sense is in George Matsell’s 1859 Vocabulum; or, the Rogue’s Lexicon, which defines dukes as “hands” and also includes the word in an appendix of “Technical Words and Phrases in General Use by Pugilists.” Matsell had been New York City’s first police commissioner, so the word’s appearance here hints at an American origin for the slang usage, but there are other only slightly later appearances in Britain, so we cannot say for certain on which side of the Atlantic the usage started.

How duke acquired this slang meaning is not known, but there are two commonly touted explanations. The one better supported by evidence is that it comes from the Romany dukkering, meaning palm reading. Matsell’s Vocabulum also has an entry for dookin cove, which is defined as “a fortune-teller.”

The other explanation was proffered by the 1874 edition of Hotten’s Slang Dictionary:

Dukes, or DOOKS, the hands, originally modification of the rhyming slang, “Duke of Yorks,” forks=fingers, hands—a long way round, but quite true. The word is in common use among low folk. “Put up your DOOKS” is a kind invitation to fight.

An American origin would work against this explanation, but as mentioned, a US origin is not certain.

Also in 1874, we seek the phrase put up your dukes in the records of London’s Old Bailey court in the trial of a William Onion, who was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to month’s imprisonment:

JAMES HOLMES. I am manager of the Old Rose public-house, St. George's Street—on the night of 12th June the prisoner and deceased were there drinking together with a third man—they were quarrelling—I told them to go outside, which they did—I stood at the door to keep them from coming in—I saw the deceased strike the prisoner two or three times and want to fight him; they were not violent blows—the prisoner said if he gave him one blow that would be enough for him, and he hit him one blow under the nose on the lip; he fell and caught his head against the side of the kerb—I went in and saw no more—they had been drinking, but were not drunk.

Cross-examined by the Prisoner. The deceased had previously been quarrelling with another man—I did not hear you say “What is the use of two old pals quarrelling”—I did not hear you call for a pot of beer and say “You had better quarrel with that”—I would not serve you nor the other houses either—the deceased went on the top of the hill, and said “Come on, you are no man if you don't put up your dukes”—that was before you struck him—you were on the lower part—there are stones there sticking out of the ground—he took every advantage of you.

As with many slang terms, the exact origin is lost in the mists of time, but at least with this one, there is some evidence pointing to the Romany origin.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

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

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. duke, n.3, dook, n.1.

Hotten, John Camden. The Slang Dictionary. London: Chatto and Windus, 1874, 153. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Matsell, George W. Vocabulum; or, the Rogue’s Lexicon. New York: 1859, 27, 28, 126. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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

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

Plummer, Charles and John Earle. Two of the Saxon Chronicles, vol. 1 of 2 (1892). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952 (reprint), 260. HathiTrust Digital Archive. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, fols. 87r–v.

Swanton, Michael, trans. and ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1996). New York: Routledge, 1998, 260.

“William Onion. Killing; manslaughter. 13th July 1874.” The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, Reference # t18740713-478.

Image credit: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, fols. 87r–v. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

protactinium

Microscopic image of atoms of protactinium-233 (dark area) in the light of their radioactive emission

12 July 2024

The element protactinium is a dense, radioactive, silvery-gray metal in the actinide series with atomic number 91 and the symbol Pa. Due to its rarity and its radioactivity, it has no applications outside of research.

The element was first discovered by Kazimierz Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring in 1913, and they dubbed it brevium, with the symbol Bv, due to its short half-life.

But in 1918 Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered a more stable isotope of the element, dubbing it protactinium (pro[t]- + actinium) because one of its decay products is the element actinium:

Die Vermutung, daß die Pechblenderückstände das geeignete Versuchsmaterial bieten, hat sich bewährt. Es ist uns gelungen, ein neues aktives Element aufzufinden und den Beweis zu erbringen, daß es die Muttersubstanz des Actiniums ist. Wir schlagen dafür den Namen Protactinium vor.

[The assumption that the pitchblende residues provide suitable experimental material has been confirmed. We have succeeded in finding a new active element and providing evidence that it is the parent substance of actinium. We propose the name protactinium for it.]

In early use, the name protoactinium was occasionally used, taking the added < t > to mean the prefix was proto- instead of pro-

In 1949, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) gave priority of discovery to the Hahn and Meitner, and hence protactinium is the name used today.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Fajans, Kasimir and Paul Beer. “Das Verhalten der Radio-elemente bei Fällungsreaktionen.” Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft, 46.3, July 1913, 3486–97 at 3492. DOI: 10.1002/cber.191304603130.

Hahn, Otto von and Lise Meitner. “Die Muttersubstanz des Actiniums, ein Neues Radioaktives Element von Langer Lebensdauer.” Physikalische Zeitschrift, 19.10, 15 May 1918, 208–18 at 211. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Hevesy, G. v. “Diffusion und Valenz der Radioelemente” (7 October 1913). Physikalische Zeitschrift, 14.24, 1 December 1913, 1202–09 at 1205. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

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.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2007, s.v. protactinium, n.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 1969. US Department of Energy photo. Flickr.com. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

yas / yassify

Yassified version of the Quaker Oats logo

10 July 2024

To yassify something is to apply beauty filters to a digital image in an over-the-top manner in order to create a humorous result, and often, in a callback to the term’s roots in 1980s Black and LatinX queer culture, to transform the image of man into that of a woman. It, and its forerunner the exclamation yas, are good examples of how a term can exist in a subculture for decades before exploding into general popularity and then fading from general use once the fad becomes passé.

Yassify appeared and went viral in 2021 with the 13 November launch of the Twitter account @YassifyBot (not really a bot, but an actual person) that featured such transformed images. The viral sensation quickly caught the attention of the press. The following appeared in the student newspaper the Cornell Daily Sun on 22 November 2021:

We probably have all glowed ourselves up with some retouches on a photo editing app at some point. But have you also tried giving yourself a poreless face, a pair of smokey eyes, plumped-up lips, balayaged hair and well-defined cheekbones? In other words, have you “yassified” yourself? Or we should ask ourselves, why are we comfortable doing the former but not the latter?

The past two weeks have given birth to a sea of “yassify” (or “yassification”) memes. These memes first emerged from queer Twitter, where people began sharing heavily edited photos of public figures with the glamazon look.

The trend soon became an internet culture phenomenon when an edited scene from the A24 horror film Hereditary took off. In the clip, Toni Collette turned from screaming in terror to serving her look. After this meme went viral, no one was safe from “yassification.” From celebrities like Timothée Chalamet, politicians like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to historical figures like Mother Teresa, everyone was turned into exemplars of our beauty ideals.

It might already sound familiar to some of you, but yassification is a derivation of the term “yaaass queen.” Originated from 1980s ballroom culture in New York City, the queer slang-turned internet culture phenomenon went mainstream in 2013 thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race and a video of a Lady Gaga fan. “Yas queen” has now become part of the everyday lexicon in youth culture that people say in response to someone fabulous.

And the word was featured in the online New York Times on 24 November 2021 and in the Sunday print edition four days later:

“Girl With a Pearl Earring” in a full face of makeup. The first Queen Elizabeth contoured from her neck ruff up. Severus Snape with jet-black hair extensions. Sasquatch sporting a smoky eye.

These are just a few of the altered images that have been shared by YassifyBot, a Twitter account that started popping up in people’s feeds this month.

To “yassify” something, in the account’s parlance, is to apply several beauty filters to a picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its subject—be that a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional character or a work of fine art—becomes almost unrecognizably made up.

Since YassifyBot’s account was activated on Nov. 13, it has tweeted hundreds of photographs in which subjects’ lashes appear thick and spidery; their eyebrows look as though they’ve seen the business end of a pencil; their hair has been lengthened and, often, colored; and their cheekbones and nose are sharply contoured.

Yassify was voted Informal Word of the Year for 2021 by the American Dialect Society.

As stated in these sources, yassify has its roots in the use of yas, a variation on yes, by Black and Latino drag ballroom culture in the 1980s as an exclamation of recognition, encouragement, and support. Many examples of yas being used can be seen in the 1990 documentary on ball culture, Paris Is Burning. The word came to the attention of the general English-language discourse community in 2013 when a video of a Lady Gaga fan using the term went viral and again in 2015 when it was used on the TV show Broad City. Yas was added to the online Oxford Dictionaries in 2017.

An example of yas being used by a queer student is quoted in a 2015 University of Alabama master’s thesis:

To be honest with you, sometimes I am self-conscious about my voice. I know I have to get over that, because it’s just what I sound like…  I’m working on that. I mean, it isn’t like I’m some stereotypical sassy queen who walks around saying, “Yas queen! Ya! Slay!” We all know that one gay who is always snapping and showing out. I don’t put on a show like that! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like a bitchy kiki at the Pride Parade as much as the next queen… I just wish I didn’t sound as squeaky while I dish!

After 2021, however, the word faded from use once the novelty wore off. It can still be heard, just not at the rate of its peak in popularity.

Discuss this post

---

Sources:

Amatulli, Jenna. “Here’s the Real Origin of the Word ‘Yas.’” Huffpost.com, 19 July 2017 (updated 4 September 2017).

Forst, Michael. Understanding Marginalized Queer Voices: An Ethnography of LGBTQ Spaces. University of Alabama (Master’s Thesis), 2015, 58. ProQuest Dissertations.

Levine, Jon. “Yaaass, You Have Black Drag Queens to Thank for the Internet’s Favorite Expression.” Mic.com, 7 October 2015.

O’Neill, Shane. “What Does It Mean to ‘Yassify’ Anything?” New York Times (online), 24 November 2021. ProQuest Blog, Podcast, or Website. Print version: 28 November 2021, Sunday Styles 2.

Oxford Dictionaries, 2017, s.v. yas, excl.

Yang, Stephen. “Yassification: Contestation of the Extremes and the Binaries.” Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, New York), 22 November 2021. ProQuest Wire Feed.

“Yas Gaga.” YouTube.com, 21 August 2013.

Zimmer, Benjamin, Kelly E. Wright, Brianne Hughes, and Charles E. Carson. “Among the New Words.” American Speech, 97.3, August 2022, DOI: 10.1215/00031283-10096035.

Image credit: @YassifyBot, X.com, 22 November 2021. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.