tantalum

Illustration of a nearly naked man sitting on a rock in a pool of water, reaching for fruit that is just out of his reach

1565 copy by Giulio Sanuto of lost painting by Titian depicting Tantalus reaching for fruit

6 September 2024

Tantalum is a chemical element with atomic number 73 and the symbol Ta. It is a hard, ductile, blue-gray transition metal. It has a high melting point and is corrosion resistant and relatively inert chemically, making it useful in reaction vessels, jet engines, nuclear reactors, and in capacitors for electronic equipment. The element was discovered in 1802 by Anders Ekeberg.

Tantalum is another element which takes its name from Greek mythology, but in this case the name is also a metaphor for one of its chemical properties. It is named for Tantalus, the king of Phrygia, who was punished by the gods for a number of crimes. He abused Zeus’s hospitality by, when invited to dine at Olympus, stealing nectar and ambrosia. And more gruesomely, he offered up his son Pelops as the main course at a banquet for the gods. Tantalus’s punishment in the afterlife was to forever stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree. Whenever he reached from the fruit, the branches would move out of his reach, and whenever he stooped to drink, the water would recede. The verb to tantalize also comes from his name.

Ekeberg named the element tantalum due to its resistance to acids. Like the mythological king’s inability to get a drink, the metal resists reacting to acids:

Tar jag mig den frihet, at gifva namn åt famillen. Sjelfva recruten bland metallerne kallar jag TANTALUM, dels för at fólja bruket, som gillar namn ur Mythologien, dess för at alludera på dess oförmögenhet at, midt i ôfverflödet af syra, dåraf taga något åt sig och måttas. Malmen, ſom består af Tantalum, Jårn, och Manganes, må heta Tantalit.

(I take the liberty of naming the family. The newcomer itself among the metals I call TANTALUM, partly to follow the practice, which likes names from mythology, partly to allude to its inability to, in the midst of an excess of acid, absorb any of it and be saturated. The ore, which consists of tantalum, iron, and manganese, may be called tantalite.)

It is chemically similar to niobium, and the two elements are frequently found together in ores. In myth, Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus.

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Sources:

Ekeberg, A. G. “Upplysning om Ytterjordens egenskaper, i synnerhet i jämförelse med Berylljorden: om de Fossilier, hvari förstnämnde jord innehålles, samt om en ny upptäckt kropp af metallisk natur.” Kongliga Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar, 23, 1802, 68–83 at 80. 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, second edition, 1989, s.v. tantalum, n.

Image credit: Giulio Sanuto, 1565. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

trek / Trekkie / Trekker

Photo of two women in Star Fleet uniforms from Star Trek: The Original Series; one is holding a phaser pistol from the series

Two Trekers (or are they Trekkies?) at Heroes Con 2013

4 September 2024

Trekker and Trekkie mean the same thing, but the words have different connotations. Both refer to fans of the science fiction television show, and now movie franchise, Star Trek, which started airing on American television in 1966. The two terms are sometimes differentiated, however, in that a Trekker is a more serious and studious fan.

The word trek comes from the Dutch, meaning to pull or to journey, that is originally by horse-or ox-drawn wagon, or a noun meaning an act of pulling a wagon or taking such a journey. It comes into English via South Africa, with its mix of British and Dutch settler-colonists.

The earliest written appearances in English demonstrate a lack of familiarity with Dutch in that the word is spelled with an <a>. It appears in a 22 November 1820 letter by Thomas Philipps, one of the original British settler-colonists to the Cape Colony in 1820, as a command given to a draft animal to begin pulling:

A Dutchman never seems in a hurry, he carries his Mutton and dried beef and bread and his blanket in a large chest on which he sits to drive, and with his pipe jogs on contentedly, now and then calling out “Trac, Trac.”

And John Mitford Bowker, another early English settler-colonist, uses the verb in his journal of 25 September 1835 meaning to travel:

Making ready for to track have got no horses.

And we see the <e> spelling when Bowker uses the noun in a letter dated 7 May 1846:

We, all of us, have been sick more or less, for it is one thing to look to your concerns at home, and another to try to look to them in the camp, and also to do patrol duty by day and sentry duty at night. But enough of this. Here we are on trek; for with Skietkloof at our backs we could keep nothing.

And we see the verb with the <e> spelling in R. Gordon Cumming’s 1850 A Hunter’s Life in South Africa:

From time immemorial, these interesting and stupendous quadrupeds had maintained their ground throughout these their paternal domains, although they were constantly hunted, and numbers of them were slain, by the neighbouring active and athletic warriors of the Amaponda tribes, on account of their flesh—the ivory so much prized amongst civilized nations being by them esteemed of no value, the only purpose to which they adapt it being the manufacture of rings and ornaments for their fingers and arms. These gallant fellows, armed only with their assegais or light javelins of their own manufacture, were in the constant habit of attacking the gigantic animals, and overpowering them with the accumulated showers of their weapons. At length, however, when the white lords of the creation pitched their camps on the shores of Southern Africa, a more determined and general warfare was waged against the elephants on account of their ivory, with the more destructive engines of ball and powder. In a few years, those who managed to escape from the hands of their oppressors, after wandering from forest to forest, and from one mountain-range to another, and finding that sanctuary there was none, turned their faces to the north-east, and “trekked” or migrated from their ancestral jungles to lands unknown.

Jump forward a century or so, and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek aired its first episode on 8 September 1966. Trekker appears five months later in a headline assigned to a letter in TV Guide of 22 February 1967:

TREKKER

This is an appeal to the public to stand behind the only intellectually stimulating program NBC has come up with in years. Star Trek at least rises above the typical “father is a slob, mother is a scatterbrain, and the children triumph” programs that fill the prime time every night.

And a group of fans of the TV series from Trenton, New Jersey wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer, a portion of the letter appearing in the 5 April 1967 issue:

From “Trenton Trekkers”: “Thanks for your interview with William Shatner. As avid fans of “Star Trek,” we hope that you will write about our favorite, Leonard Nimoy, the magnificent Mr. Spock.”

Trekkie appears the following year in the fanzine Plak-Tow #8, dated June 1968, in a piece gushing about actor Mark Lenard, who played a Romulan commander and Spock’s father, Sarek, in the series:

I don't know about other people, but I'm afraid I was acting out of snobbery in cataloguing the roles I'd soon Mr. Lenard play when I sent him a fan letter—I'd wanted to make it clear I wasn't just a trekkie in love with Spock and therefore with all things Vulcan, especially Spock's father, but rather a sophisticated, mature admirer of good acting wherever it appears. Which I hope is true—but I'm in love with Sarek anyway.

And

His great, warm brown eyes are guaranteed to melt any trekkie into a helpless pool of protoplasm.

The distinction between Trekker and Trekkie dates to at least 1970, when it appears in the fanzine Deck 6:

If you object to opinions expressed or statements made in DECK 6, please don’t blame the “Deck 6 gang.” With the exception of issue #1 (which was written by Ellen), I’m responsible. Any contributions by the rest of the gang will be so labeled, so if you’re planning to hit anyone, better aim at me. The gang is a definite help, though—they keep my spirits up, and beat me down when I start acting like a bubble-headed trekkie (rather than a sober, dignified—albeit enthusiastic—trekker).

So, when in doubt as to which word to use, go with Trekker. A Trekkie won’t be insulted, but the reverse is not the case.

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Sources:

Berman, Ruth and Dorothy Jones. “A Mid-Spring’s Night’s Dream, or, Journey to Backstage.” Plak-Tow, 8, June 1968. Fanlore.org.

Bowker, John Mitford. Letter, 7 May 1846. Speeches, Letters, and Selections from Important Papers. Grahamstown, South Africa: Godlonton and Richards, 1864, 222. Google Books.

Cumming, R. Gordon. A Hunter’s Life in South Africa, vol. 1 of 2. London: John Murray, 1850, 47–48. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford University Press, 1996, s.v. trek, n.

Harris, Harry. “AFTRA Strike Riles Viewer.” Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania), 5 April 1967, 17/3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, s.v. trekker, n. (21 November 2023), trekkie, n. (27 November 2023).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trek, n., trek, v., trekkie, n., addition 2019, s.v. trekker, n.

Philipps, Thomas. Philipps, 1820 Settler: His Letters. Arthur Keppel-Jones, ed. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1960, 74.

Pruitt, Carol. Deck 6, #8, May 1970. Fanlore.org.

TV Guide, 22 February 1967, A-72. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Pat Loika, 2013. Flickr.com. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

nova / supernova

Photo of a spiral galaxy with an arrow superimposed that is pointing to a bright “star”

Supernova SN 2023IXF in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), 25 May 2023

2 September 2024

Today, novas and supernovas (or supernovae) are considered to be distinct phenomenon. But prior to the 1930s, the term nova was applied to both. In current usage, a nova occurs in binary star systems consisting of a white dwarf star and a larger star where the white dwarf is accreting material, mostly hydrogen, from its larger companion. When the white dwarf reaches a critical mass, it blows off the excess material in a violent explosion. When this results in the destruction of the white dwarf, it is classified as a Type 1a supermova.

A regular supernova, on the other hand, is the last stage in the life of massive star. When the star is no longer able to sustain a fusion reaction sufficient to counteract its own gravity, it implodes. This gravitational collapse triggers a sudden outburst of fusion reactions that result in a tremendous explosion, destroying the star.

The term nova is from the Latin meaning new because either of these two phenomena appear, from the perspective of an observer on earth, to be a new star.

The coining of nova to refer to an exploding star is often credited to the astronomer Tycho Brahe, but this is not quite correct. Brahe was one of many around the world who observed what we now know to have been a Type 1a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia in the year 1572 (SN 1572). Many commentaries and histories conflate two different texts by Brahe. The following year, Brahe published his observations in a text titled is De nova et nullius ævi memoria prius visa stella (Concerning the New, and Never Before Seen in the Memory of Anyone, Star). Many commentaries refer to this 1573 text as De stella nova (Concerning the New Star), but this is not Brahe’s original title and the phrase stella nova does not appear in Brahe’s 1573 text.

But as a coda to Brahe’s text, the 1573 publication includes a poem by Brahe’s friend Anders Sørensen Vedel that does use the phrase:

IN MATHEMATICAM
NOVAE STELLAE CONTEMPLATI
onem, factam a Iuuene Nobilium Doctissimo & Doctorum Nobilissimo, Thycone Brahe Otthonide.

Coellorum illustre augmentum, NOVA STELLA, quid affert?

[…]

Exite, exite, Aegyptum, Babylona, Sodmam;
Promittat CANAAN, haec noua Stella, nouam.

(WITH MATHEMATICS
NEW STARS OBSERVED
One, made by the Younger of the Most Noble Scholars and the Most Noble of Doctors, Tycho Brahe.

The glorious increase of the heavens, the NEW STAR, what does it bring?

[…]

Escape, escape, Egypt, Babylon, Sodom;
It promises CANAAN, this new Star, a new one.)

Brahe, however, would pen another treatise on the celestial event, which would be posthumously published in 1602 under the title De stella nova, as the first volume (actually published second) of his Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata, and Brahe does use the phrase stella nova in this later text.

So while Brahe did not coin the phrase, at least in publication, the association of stella nova with him is appropriate.

By the early nineteenth century, astronomers writing in English would be using nova to designate observations of a previously unrecorded celestial object, not limited to exploding stars. Beginning in 1824, astronomers John Herschel, the son of astronomer William Herschel, and James South would start using the designation nova in their observations published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

And we see the noun nova applied to exploding stars by the end of that century. An article in the St. Louis Republic of 17 January 1899 that includes this description of looking through the thirty-six-inch refractor telescope at Lick Observatory in California:

The nebula in Orion was another object of great interest, but it baffles all description. The six stars of the Trapezium were separated, and the “Nova,” Alvan Clark’s star, was barely visible.

Astronomers Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky coined the term supernova in lectures at Caltech in 1931. Zwicky would go on to use super-novae at a meeting of the American Physical Society in December 1933, and this use would be picked up by newspapers. From an International News Service article of 9 December 1933:

Strange temporary stars known as “Super-Novae,” composed entirely of neutrons occur in the earth’s star system about once every 1,000 years, producing the cosmic rays, he said. The stars are seen only when they explode, Dr. Zwicky declared.

The phrase “earth’s star system” probably refers to our galaxy, the Milky Way. And astronomers now estimate that a supernova appears in our galaxy every century or so. We haven’t seen one in our galaxy since 1604, which means either that we’re overdue for one or that others have occurred on the other side of the galactic center from Earth, where they have been obscured from our view by intervening dust.

Astronomer Knut Lundmark was another early user of the term supernova and may have independently coined it. He used it in an article written in 1932 and published the following year.

Earlier terms to describe the phenomenon were giant nova, exceptional nova, and the German Hauptnova (main nova). But these did not catch on.

The verb phrases to go nova and to go supernova have their origins in science fiction. In the February 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, editor John W. Campbell wrote:

We’ve considered what might happen if Sol itself went nova. If it should go supernova, no worse could happen; Earth and all life on it would be fused and volatilized in either case.

But there is a very different kind of nova with a very different origin. Nova, a description and term for smoked salmon, often in the form nova lox, appears by 1955. This sense is a clipping of Nova Scotia, through which much of the product was once imported into the United States and assumed to be its origin.

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Sources:

Advertisement. Evening Star (Washington, DC), 30 November 1955, A-44/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Brahe, Tycho. Astronomiae instauratæ progymnasmata. Uraniborg, Denmark: 1602. ProQuest Early European Books.

Campbell, John W. “Supernova Centaurus.” Astounding Science Fiction, 28.6, February 1942, n.p. Archive.org.

Herschel, John Frederick and James South. “Observations of the Apparent Distances and Positions of 380 Double and Triple Stars, Made in the Years 1821, 1822, and 1823” (15 January 1824). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, part 3. London: W. Nicol, 1824, 82. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, 11 Marcy 2021, s.v. nova, n.

International News Service. “Star Explosions Form Cosmic Rays, Scientist Asserts.” Denver Post (Colorado), 9 December 1933, 6/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Osterbrock, D. E. “Who Really Coined the Word Supernova? Who First Predicted Neutron Stars?” (conference presentation). 199th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, 6–10 January 2002. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 33, 1330–31. SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS).

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, s.v. nova, n.1, nova, n.2; June 2012, s.v. supernova, n.

Vedel, Anders Sørensen (Andreas Velleius). “In mathematicam novae stellae contemplati.” In Brahe, Tycho. De nova et nullius ævi memoria prius visa stella. Copenhagen: 1573. ProQuest: Early European Books.

“Vulcan No Myth. That Intermercurial Planet Seen by Prof. Pritchett.” St. Louis Republic (Missouri), 17 January 1899, 3/3–4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: David Wilton, 2023, licensable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

sulfur

Clouds of sulfur in a portion of the North America Nebula (NGC 7000) in the constellation Cygnus

30 August 2024

Sulfur is a chemical element with atomic number 16 and the symbol S. It is a yellow, crystalline solid at room temperature. By mass, it is the tenth most abundant element in the universe and the fifth most abundant on earth. It has been known since antiquity but only recognized as an element with advent of modern chemistry in the late eighteenth century. It has a wide variety of commercial applications, including in making matches, gunpowder fertilizer, fungicides and pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and as a precursor for other chemicals.

The word is borrowed into English from French, specifically the Anglo-Norman sulfre, which in turn comes from the Latin sulfur. It is recorded in Anglo-Norman texts from the early twelfth century.

Sulfur makes its English-language appearance by the end of the fourteenth century. Here is a passage from John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, written prior to 1393, in which Medea is casting a spell upon Jason’s father Aeson:

Tho lay ther certein wode cleft,
Of which the pieces nou and eft
Sche made hem in the pettes wete,
And put hem in the fyri hete,
And tok the brond with al the blase,
And thries sche began to rase
Aboute Eson, ther as he slepte;
And eft with water, which sche kepte,
Sche made a cercle aboute him thries,
And eft with fyr of sulphre twyes.

(Then lay there certain hewn wood,
Of which the pieces now and again
She placed them in the wet pits,
And put them in the hot fire.
And took the brand with all its blaze,
And thrice she began to run
Around Aeson, there as he slept;
And also with water, which she had kept,
She made a circle about him thrice,
And also with fire of sulfur twice.)

The spellings sulfur and sulphur have coexisted since the word appeared in Middle English, with sulphur being the more common spelling for most of the word’s history. The distinction is often thought to be a difference in American and British spelling, but that geographic distinction is quite recent. Sulfur only became the dominant U.S. spelling c. 1940. In 1990, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted the sulfur spelling as the official one, and British research publications quickly began to adopt that spelling as well. The sulfur spelling eclipsed the sulphur one in British English c. 2015.

Timeline of American spelling of sulfur / sulphur, showing the sulfur spelling becoming the more common one c. 1940

Timeline of American spelling of sulfur / sulphur

Timeline of British spelling of sulfur / sulphur, showing the sulfur spelling becoming the more common one c. 2015

Timeline of British spelling of sulfur / sulphur


Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2021, s.v. sulfre, n.

Gower, John. Confessio Amantis. In Confessio Amantis, Volume 3, Russell A. Peck ed. and Andrew Galloway, trans. lines 5:4085–94. TEAMS Middle English Texts.

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

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, second edition, 1989, s.v. sulfur | sulphur, n.

Image credits: NGC 7000, David Wilton, 2024, licensable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License; Google Books Ngram Viewer, 28 July 2024, American spelling, British spelling.

troop / troops / trooper

Black-and-white photo of a group of late 19th-century African-American cavalrymen

A troop of Buffalo Soldiers from the U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment, c. 1898

28 August 2024

A troop is a unit of people, most often soldiers, especially a unit of cavalry, but it is also used for other groups of people collected in bands, such as entertainers (in which case it is usually spelled troupe). It is also used for a group of animals, especially apes or monkeys. The plural troops is used to refer to soldiers generally, and colloquially the singular troop is sometimes used to refer to a single soldier, although trooper would be more common.

The word is borrowed from the French trope or troupe, which in turn is from the Latin troppus (flock). The word appears in English in a letter written by Viscount John Lisle to King Henry VIII in 1545:

The maner wherof, with allso our mercheng by lande towardes Treportt, styll in the face of your enymyes, who assemblyd more and more in gret troupes, and now and then, with some horsemen, sceirmished with us, as they dyrste.

And it appears as a verb in a 1565 thesaurus:

Agglomero, ágglómeras, pen. cor. agglomerâre, Ex Ad & Glomero. To make vppe on a heape: to folde vp in a botome: as threed: to prease or gather thicke to gether, as souldiours doe: to trowpe.

By 1590, it is being used specifically to refer to a unit of cavalry, a sense that is still in use in the U.S. Army today, although nowadays the horses have been exchanged for tanks and helicopters. From John Smythe’s Certain Discourses of that year:

By reason, that through the lacke of certaine pay, and no hope of reward for extraordinary deserts, it hath come to passe, that the souldiors thereby being made voluntary, haue obeyed their Captaines no otherwise than hath pleased themselues, altering and changing their weapons, as also themselues out of one band into an other, and sometimes horsemen to become footemen, and footemen to become horsemen; besides their forraging and stragling from their Ensignes without order; as also their negligence and lacke of vigilancie in their watches, bodies of watches and centinels, and by disordering themselues vpon euery light occasion both in battallion, squadron and troupe.

And the plural form, used to denote soldiers generally, is in place by the end of the sixteenth century. From Robert Barret’s 1598 The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres, writing of the soldiers serving the Spanish crown:

In his brables in Britayn; besides the incredible nu[m]ber of his pistolets continually flying in (almost) euery nation, to infect, corrupt, and pierce the mindes, hearts, and soules of good Princes subiectes, to their Princes annoyance, and their owne confusion in fine. Italy, Fraunce, and Flanders, too full of his pencionary troupes: I pray God, that other nations tast not of his infection.

Trooper, referring to a single cavalry soldier, is in place by the middle of the seventeenth century. Here we see it in a record of what cavalry soldiers in the Scottish Covenanters Army of 1640 should be paid:

The quhilk day the Committie ordaines, that, the troupe horss to be leviat furth of the Stewartrie for the service of the publict. That, the worste horss be worthe jc. lib. Monie, and whar horss are better to be apprysed be the Committie according to thair worthe, and the siller peyit thairon, aither in monie or security. And ordaines, that ilk trouper have for the twa pairt of the 40 dayes lone appoyntit be the Committie of Estaites xviij libs., conforme to the general order; and that ilk horsman have for arms, at the leist, ane steill cape and sworde, ane paire of pistolles, and ane lance, and for fornishing thairof, ordaines to be given xx rex dollares.

And by the mid twentieth century, trooper had also come to be used to refer to any stalwart person. Here is an example from poet Roy Campbell’s 1952 autobiography:

I always liked Stuart because he was generous with money, tough and independent. He trusted one and one trusted him. We were all like that, Nina Hammet (she was a find trouper), Rowley Smart, Betty May, Joseph Kramer, and all the other penniless bohemians of whom I as the only one ever to raise any spare cash—by working at sea, or from my indulgent parents at home who always spoilt me.

And the singular troop, referring to a single soldier, makes its appearance in the nineteenth century. From a passage in Basil Hall’s 1832 Fragments of Voyages and Travels in which the author describes an incident when a naval ship’s pet monkey took revenge upon a marine who had been abusing it:

Next morning the monkey stowed himself away behind the pumps, till the same marine passed; he then sprung out, and laid hold of him by the calf of the leg; and, in spite of sundry kicks and cuffs, never once relaxed his jaws till the teeth met amongst what the loblolly boy, in the pride of his anatomical knowledge, called the “gastrocnemii muscles” of his enemy's leg. The cries of murder! from the soldier brought the marines, and many of the sailors, under the half-deck to the poor fellow's rescue, while the author of the mischief scuttled off amongst the men's feet, chattering and screaming all the way. He was not again seen during two or three days; at the end of which, as the wounded “troop” was not much hurt, a sort of truce was proclaimed between the red and the blue factions of the ship.


Sources:

Barret, Robert. The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres. London: William Posonby, 1598, 136. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Campbell, Roy. Light on a Dark Horse: An Autobiography. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952, 208. Archive.org.

Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus Linguae Romanæ and Britannicæ. London: Berthelet, 1565,  sig. F2r., s.v. agglomero. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Hall, Basil. Fragments of Voyages and Travels, second series, vol. 2 of 3. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1832, 124–25. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Lisle, John (later styled John Dudley, Earl of Warwick). Letter to Henry VIII (1545). State Papers (Henry VIII), vol. 1. Commission for Printing and Publishing State Papers, 829. 1830. Google Books.

Minute Book Kept by the War Committee of the Covenanters in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in the Years 1640 and 1641. Kirkcudbright, Scotland: J. Nicholson, 1855, 1–2. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. trooper, n., troop, v.; additions series, 1993, s.v. troop, n.

Smythe, John. Certain Discourses. London: Richard Johnes, 1590, 2r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.