ruthenium

Coat of arms of Ruthenia used at the Council of Constance, 1414–18

10 January 2025

Ruthenium is a chemical element with atomic number 44 and the symbol Ru. The metal is a member of the platinum group and usually found in platinum ores. Like other members of that group it is generally unreactive. Ruthenium is used in alloys, especially in electronic equipment, to increase hardness and corrosion resistance. A radioactive isotope of the metal is used in radiotherapy of eye tumors. Ruthenium tetroxide is used to express latent fingerprints.

Ruthenium was discovered on three different occasions, but the first two were not confirmed. In 1808 Jędrzej Śniadecki found the element in South American platinum ores, which he dubbed vestium after the recently discovered asteroid Vesta, but his work could not be verified. In 1828, Gottfried Osann found the element in platinum ore that had been mined in the Ural Mountains. Osann named the element ruthenium:

Das Gerücht von Aussindung eines neuen Metalls veranlafste Vorschläge zur Benennung desselben, unter welchen der, es Ruthenium zu nennen, gewiss der pas sendste ist.

The rumor of the discovery of a new metal gave rise to suggestions for its name, of which calling it ruthenium is certainly the most appropriate.

The element’s name comes from Ruthenia, originally a medieval Latin name for what is now southeastern Poland and Ukraine that is often used synonymously with Russia. The place name appears in English by the late fourteenth century in John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus in his De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things). Trevisa wrote:

Rvcia hatte Rutenia and is a prouynce of Messia [in þe march of þe lasse Asia].

(Russia is called Ruthenia and is a province of Messia [in the marches of lesser Asia].)

But again the discovery was called into question and Osann withdrew his claim of discovery. Karl Ernest Claus, an ethnic-German Russian, definitively found the element in 1844 and retained Osann’s name for it in honor of his homeland.

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Sources:

Anglicus, Bartholomaeus. On the Properties of Things, vol. 2 of 3. John Trevisa, trans. M.C. Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 15.130, 2:802.

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.

Osann, G. “Forsetzung der Untersuchung des Platins vom Ural.” Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 13, 1838, 283–97 at 281. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2011, s.v. ruthenium, n.; Ruthenian, n. & adj.

Image credit: Conrad Grünenberg, 1480. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

soap opera / horse opera / space opera

Time, 12 January 1976

8 January 2025

A soap opera is a melodramatic, serial drama. The term is also used figuratively to denote real-life events of the type that would be dramatized in the genre. Soap operas got their start in radio before moving on to television and were typically broadcast in the daytime with a target audience of housewives, although their popularity often extended beyond that demographic. The name comes from the fact that early soap operas were often sponsored by soap companies.

The first soap opera is generally considered to be Ma Perkins, which was first broadcast on WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio (Cincinnati being the home of soap manufacturer Proctor & Gamble) on 14 August 1933. The NBC radio network picked up the program in December of that year. Ma Perkins ran until 1960, and for most of those years it was sponsored by Oxydol detergent, one of Proctor & Gamble’s products.

The earliest use of the term that I have been able to find is in the Buffalo Times (New York) of 27 February 1938:

Chicago is the home of the “soap opera,” an odd name which has been tacked on to those morning and afternoon serial dramas by radio actors. Soap manufacturers were the first to use these daytime serials extensively and, actors being actors, the name stuck.

A number of the early appearances of the term were by Paul Kennedy, the radio reporter for the Cincinnati Post. On 2 March 1938 Kennedy wrote,

McKay Morris who did so slick a stint in “Tovarich” here signed as a regular member of the soap opera "Ma Perkins."

And on 9 March 1938, Memphis Tennessee’s Commercial Appeal had this:

In explaining his entrance into radio via the daytime serial route rather than guest appearances on the bigger shows, Morris expresses belief that the “soap operas” are a greater test of adaptability to radio. “And being so typically ‘radio’ as contrasted to adaptations to radio from some other medium,” he says, “they can teach me more thoroughly about radio acting.”

On 20 May 1938, Kennedy would explain the origin of the term:

Some pretty drastic things are happening to the “soap operas” beginning with today’s schedule.

The “soap opera,” in the event the term puzzles, is the 15-minute dramatic serial which has become phenomenally successful in the past two years. Beginning today the flour millers, which have offered so many of these pieces, have consolidated their programs and now have a solid hour lined up from 1 to 2 p. m. Mondays through Fridays.

[…]

But that’s not all. The Cincinnati soapworks which pioneered the soap opera as a selling medium has capped this effort and has a full our in the morning on one NBC network and full hour in the afternoon on another. The morning lineup, running from 9:45 to 10:45 includes: Ma Perkins, Story of Mary Marlin, Vic and Sade and Pepper Young’s Family. Almost the same lineup will be repeated in the afternoon from 2 to 3 on another network.

This cluster of citations from various cities in the spring of 1938 shows that use of the term was fairly widespread by this point, probably primarily orally by actors and industry insiders.

The figurative use of soap opera dates to at least 1944, when Raymond Chandler used it in his novel The Lady in the Lake:

“Nothing over there,” he said. “She packed up and went down the same night. I didn’t see her again. I don’t want to see her again. I haven’t heard a word from Muriel in the whole month, not a single word. I don’t have any idea at all where she’s at. With some other guy, maybe. I hope he treats her better than I did.”

He stood up and took the keys out of his pocket and shook them. “So if you want to go across and look at Kingsley’s cabin, there isn’t a thing to stop you. And thanks for listening to the soap opera. And thanks for the liquor. Here.” He picked the bottle up and handed me what was left of the pint.

Soap opera is modeled on an older, film-industry term, horse opera, referring to a western movie. Horse opera appears to have gotten its start on the sets of Triangle Film Studio, which produced, among many other silent films, the western films of producer Thomas Ince and actor-director William S. Hart. The term made its way onto the pages of the Seattle Times as an adjective on 3 September 1916:

Enid Markey, the Triangle-Ince actress, is having an unusual experience this week. She is the only girl among more than a hundred men who are camping out in Topango Canyon, several miles from Inceville, where William S. Hart is engaged in filming scenes for the Triangle drama by J. G. Hawks, in which she is starring. Miss Markey is appearing “opposite” Hart in the play and is so profoundly revered by the Inceville “horse-opera troupe” that she had no compunctions about living in Topango indefinitely.

And the noun appears in Variety on 28 December 1917:

Cliff Smith is known around the Triangle plant as the “director of horse opera.” He is the chap who tells Roy Stewart, the western drama, [sic] star, how it should be done before the camera.

A later coinage in a different genre modeled on horse opera and soap opera is space opera, which was apparently coined by science fiction writer Bob Wilson in the pages of his fanzine Le Zombie in January 1941:

SUGGESTION DEPT: In these hectic days of phrase-coining, we offer one. Westerns are called “horse operas”, the morning housewife hear-jerkers are called “soap operas”. For the hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn, or world-saving for that matter, we offer "space opera[.]”

There are a couple of older uses of the phrase soap opera which do not appear to be related to the term as we know it today. Stephen Goranson found an earlier use of soap drama, referring to a theatrical production, in the Oregonian newspaper of 12 April 1903, but this appears to be a one-off use:

This week just passing has been the dullest of the season in New York. (On Monday night there was not a solitary opening of importance. “Spotless Town,” called here the “the soap drama,” on account of its being based upon advertisements of Sapolio, came into the Fourteenth-Street Theater for a single week, but the piece is not of a caliber to attract the regular patronage, although it has made money on the road.

Sapolio is a soap brand founded in the nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century, famed advertising executive Artemas Ward launched a major ad campaign for the product. No longer used in North America, the Sapolio brand is now owned by Proctor & Gamble and used to sell products in South America.

And Bill Mullins found a use of soap opera in the 8 April 1918 issue of Billboard. It appears in a column consisting of short quips about pitchmen, or itinerant salesmen, many involving a salesman named Doc W. H. Hazlett. It reads as if it is a theatrical genre, but given the context it more likely refers to a salesman who had used excessive flattery, or soft soap:

Doc L. A. Leonard advancing to an open house manager in a small town: “When did have the last show?”  Manager: “A Soap Opera was here last week.” Let’s hear from you, Frank Hazlett.

But if other early examples turn up, the radio term may have an older lineage.

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Sources:

Baker, Gasoline Bill. “Pipes for Pitchmen,” The Billboard, 8 April 1918, 33/2. Archive.org.

Chandler, Raymond. The Lady in the Lake (1944). London: Heinemann/Octopus, 1977, 287 (final paragraphs of chapter 5). Archive.org.

Cook, Alton. “Bushman Still Star in Radio.” Buffalo Times (New York), 27 February 1938, 8-D/2. Newspapers.com.

“Enid Markey Camping Out.” Seattle Sunday Times (Washington), 3 September 1916, Section 3, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Goranson, Stephen. “‘Soap Opera’ 1871; ‘the soap drama’ 1903.’” ADS-L, 10 December 2024.

Gray, Robert. “‘Tovarich’ Road Show Star Joins Cast of Radio Drama.” Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), 9 March 1938, 22/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, 2022, s.v. space opera, n.

Kennedy, Paul. “From Off the Cuff.” Cincinnati Post (Ohio), 2 March 1938, 20/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

———, “‘Soap Operas’ Concentrated into Hourly Slots on Schedule.” Cincinnati Post (Ohio), 30 May 1938, 6/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. soap opera, n., horse opera, n.; third edition, December 2008, space opera, n.

Price, Guy. “Coast Picture News.” Variety, 28 December 1917, 251. ProQuest Magazines.

Tucker, Arthur Wilson “Bob.” “Depts of the Interior.” Le Zombie, 36, January 1941, 9. e-Zombie & Le Zombie.

“Weber and Fields Begin Their Annual Tour” (6 April 1903). Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 12 April 1903, 27/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Photo credit: Julian Wasser, 1976. Copyright WarnerMedia, 1976. Fair use of a low-resolution copy of a copyrighted photo used to illustrate the topic under discussion.

luxury

“Beware of Luxury” / “In Weelde Sie Toe” (In Luxury, Be Careful) or “The Upside Down World,” Jan Steen c. 1663, oil on canvas

6 January 2025

Today, we associate luxury with wealth, opulence, and indulgence, but the word originally meant lust, sexual intercourse, or just more generally sensual pleasure. The word was imported into English by the Normans, coming from the Old French luxure (lust, lechery), which in turn is from the Latin luxuria, which meant riotous living or extravagance, in classical Latin. But in medieval Latin the word had also come to mean lust or sexual license. This sexual sense is reflected in both the early English use of the word as well as in the Anglo-Norman noun and in the verb luxurier (to fornicate) and the adjective luxurius (lustful, lecherous).

Luxury is first recorded in English in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, a confessional text copied by a Kentish monk in 1340. It’s a translation of the French Somme le Roi, a very popular book in its day:

Þet uerste heaued of þe beste of helle: ys prede. Þet oþer is enuie. þe þridde wreþe. þe uerþe sleauþe þet me clepeþ ine clergie: accidye. þe vifte icinge. in clergie auarice. oþer couaytise. þe zixte glotounye. þe zeuende lecherie oþer luxurie.

(The first head of the beast of hell is pride. The next is envy. The third wrath. The fourth sloth, that we in the clergy call accidie. The fifth greed, in the clergy avarice or covetousness. The sixth is gluttony. The seventh lechery or luxury.)

The sense of luxury meaning wealth, splendor, opulence doesn’t appear until the early seventeenth century. Phineas Fletcher uses the word in both the lust and opulence senses in two different poems, both published in 1633. The sexual sense appears in his poem The Purple Island, canto 3, stanza 25:

Where Venus and her wanton have their being:
For nothing is produc't of two in all agreeing.

But though some few in these hid parts would see
Their Makers glory, and their justest shame;
Yet for the most would turn to luxurie.

And the modern sense of opulence appears in the poem Elisa, canto 25:

I never knew or want or luxurie,
Much lesse their followers; or cares tormenting,
Or ranging lust, or base-bred flatterie.

Since this modern English sense is closer to the original Latin meaning, it is probably the result of people reinterpreting the word to reflect the old meaning. Most literate people of the time also knew Latin and would have been familiar with how classical writers used the word. It is this sense that survives today, and luxury has lost whatever sexual connotations it once had.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2012, s.v. luxure, n.

Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt, vol. 1. Pamela Gradon, ed. Richard Morris, transcription (1866). London: Oxford UP, 1965, Early English Text Society O.S. 23. 16. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Ronald E. Latham, David R. Howlett, and Richard K. Ashdown, eds. Oxford: British Academy, 2013. Brepolis: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Fletcher, Phineas. The Purple Island, or, The Isle of Man, Together with Piscatorie Eclogs and Other Poeticall Miscellanies.. Cambridge: Printers to the University of Cambridge, 1633, 34–35 and 111. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Lewis, Charlon T. and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary (1879). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1933, s.v. luxuria. Brepolis: Database of Latin Dictionaries.

Middle English Dictionary, 2024, s.v. luxuri(e, n.

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

Image credit: Jan Steen, c. 1663. Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

gold

3 January 2025

Gold is a chemical element with atomic number 79 and the symbol Au. It is a bright, orange-yellowish, malleable, and ductile metal. It is also one of the least reactive of the elements, which, in addition to its use in jewelry and as an item of monetary value, makes it extremely useful in a variety of applications, especially in the manufacture of corrosion-free electrical wires and connectors.

The metal has, of course, been known since antiquity. The English word gold has its roots in Proto-Germanic and has survived unchanged in form since Old English. Here is the word used in the poem Beowulf, in a passage describing the treasures bestowed on the titular hero for killing the monster Grendel:

Him wæs ful boren,    ond freondlaþu
wordum bewægned,    ond wunden gold
estum geeawed,    earmreade twa,
hrægl ond hringas, healsbeaga mæst
þara þe ic on foldan    gefrægen hæbbe.
Nænigne ic under swegle    selran hyrde
hordmaððum hæleþa    syþan Hama ætwæg
to þære byrhtan byrig    Brosinga mene,
sigle ond sincfæt.

(A cup was brought, and friendship offered with speeches, and wrought gold generously presented to him: two armbands, a mail coat and rings, the greatest necklace on earth. I have never of a finer hoard-treasure of heroes under heaven since Hama carried off the necklace of the Brosings—gems and a precious setting—to his magnificent stronghold.)

The symbol Au comes from the Latin word for the metal, aurum.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, seven of the elemental metals were each associated with a god and with a planet, with tin associated with Jupiter. We see this association in a variety of alchemical writings, including Chaucer’s The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale:

I wol yow telle, as was me taught also,
The foure spirites and the bodies sevene,
By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene.

The firste spirit quyksilver called is,
The seconde orpyment, the thridde, ywis,
Sal armonyak, and the ferthe brymstoon.
The bodyes sevene eek, lo, hem heere anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe,
Saturnus leed, and Juppiter is tyn,
And Venus coper, by my fader kyn!

(I will tell you, as it was taught also to me,
The four spirits and the seven metals,
In the order as I often heard my lord name them.

The first spirit is called quicksilver,
The second orpiment, the third, indeed,
Sal ammoniac, and the fourth brimstone.
The seven metals also, lo, hear them now:
The Sun is gold, and the Moon we assert silver,
Mars iron, Mercury we call quicksilver,
Saturn lead, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus copper, by my father’s kin!)

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Sources:

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales. In Larry D. Benson, ed. The Riverside Chaucer, 8.819–29, 273. Also, with minor variation in wording, at https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/canons-yeomans-prologue-and-tale .

Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. gold, n.

Fulk, R.D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles. Klaeber’s Beowulf, fourth edition. Toronto: Toronto UP, 2008, lines 1192–1200a, 42.

Middle English Dictionary, 2024, s.v. gold, 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, third edition, December 2018, s.v., gold, n.1 & adj.

Photo credit: Slav4|Ariel Palmon, 2014. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Epiphany / Twelfth Night

“Adoration of the Magi,” Gentile De Fabriano, 1423, tempera on panel

30 December 2024

The Christian festival of Epiphany celebrates the visit of the Magi to worship the newborn Jesus. It falls on the sixth of January. According to tradition, Christ’s baptism and the wedding at Cana, where he turned water into wine, fell on the anniversary of the Magi’s visit. Doctrinally, all three of these events signify the manifestation of the divine Christ to the wider world. And the word epiphany is from the Latin epiphania, which in turn is from the Greek adjective ἐπιϕάνια (epiphania) and the verb ἐπιϕαίνειν (epiphainein, to manifest). Use of epiphany in English can be traced to Old English, but later use, from Middle English onward, is influenced by the borrowing of epiphanie from Old French, which also comes from the Latin and Greek.

In addition to the borrowed Epiphany, the festival was also called by the native Twelfth Day, because it falls twelve days after Christmas. And Twelfth Night is used to refer to celebrations on the eve of Epiphany. We see both Epiphany and Twelfth Day in the first law code of King Cnut (r. 1016–35), written c. 1018:

And na þearf man na fæstan fram Eastran oð Pentecosten, butan hwa gescrifen sig oððe he elles fæstan wylle; eallswa of middanwintra oð octabas Epiphanige (þæt is seofen niht ofer Twelftan mæssedæge)

(And no one needs to fast from Easter to Pentecost, except he who is shriven [i.e., fasting due to penance] or if he otherwise desires to fast; likewise from Christmas to the eighth day of Epiphany (that is seven nights after the Twelfth Day.)

Cnut’s first law code dealt primarily with ecclesiastical matters, the second primarily with secular ones. Both are thought to have been penned by Wulfstan, the archbishop of York (d. 1023).

And we see Twelfth Night in the Peterborough Chronicle for the year 878 C.E. This entry describes the defeat of King Alfred’s army by the Danes and his fleeing into the swamp to hide, although there is no mention of him burning any cakes:

Her hine bestæl se here on midne winter ofer twelftan niht to Cippanhamme & geridan Westseaxna land & gesetton & mycel þæs folces ofer sæ adræfdon & þæs oðres þone mæstan dæl hi geridon butan þam cynge Ælfrede; litle werede unyðelice æfter wudum for & on morfestenum.

(Here the Danish army stole away from Christmas until Twelfth Night to Chippenham and overran and occupied Wessex and drove many of the people across the sea, and the greatest part of the others they overran, except King Alfred, [who] with a small band went with difficulty through the woods and into moor-fastnesses.)

Epiphany is also used generically to refer to any revelation or discovery. This sense dates to the early modern period. We see it a sermon written by Bishop Jeremy Taylor (d. 1667) that was preached on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. The text for the sermon is Luke 9:54, in which James and John ask Jesus if they should call God’s fire down on Samaritans who have rejected him. Taylor writes:

It would have disturbed an excellent patience to see him, whom but just before they beheld transfigured, and in a glorious epiphany on the mount, to be so neglected by a company of hated Samaritans, as to be forced to keep his vigils where nothing but the welkin should have been his roof, not any thing to shelter his precious head from the descending dew of heaven.

An appropriate text to mark a failed plot to detonate a bomb in order to kill a king.

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Sources:

Dictionary of Old English: A to Le, 2024, s.v. epiphanie, n.

Irvine, Susan, ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 7, MS E. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2004, 50. JSTOR.

Liebermann, Felix. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. 1 of 3. Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903, 1 Cnut 16.1 (c. 1018), 1.296.

Middle English Dictionary, 2024, s.v. epiphanie, n.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Epiphany, n.1, epiphany, n.2, Twelfth-day, n. Twelfth-night, n.

Taylor, Jeremy. “A Sermon.” In The Works of Jeremy Taylor, vol. 4 of 5. T. S. Hughes, ed. London: A. J. Valpy, 1831, 238–39. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Gentile de Fabriano, 1423; Uffizi Gallery. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.