selenium

Painting of a stylized crescent moon where the illuminated crescent is in the shape of a nude woman

“Selene,” Albert Aublet, 1880, oil on canvas

7 February 2025

Selenium is a chemical element with atomic number 34 and the symbol Se. It can appear as a red powder; a vitreous, black solid; or a gray metallic solid. It is rarely found in nature in a pure form, found usually in metal sulfide ores where it takes the place of sulfur. It is a chalcogen, a group that includes oxygen, sulfur, and tellurium. Selenium is toxic, although trace amounts are necessary for life as we know it. It has a variety of uses in industry, including production of glass, brass alloys, batteries, solar cells, and photoconductors.

Selenium was discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Johan Gottlieb Gahn in 1817. Berzelius named the element after Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon, paralleling the naming of tellurium, which was named after the earth. When burned, selenium gives off an odor reminiscent of horseradish, a similar odor to that exuded by tellurium, leading the chemist to initially think he was dealing with a tellurium compound. Subsequent work convinced him that his initial assessment was incorrect. Berzelius announced the discovery in a series of letters sent to chemists throughout Europe, which were subsequently published in various scientific journals. Here is an extract of one of those letters, dated 27 January 1818:

Da das reine Tellurium diesen Geruch nicht verbreitet, weder im metallischen noch im oxydirten Zustande, so vermuthe ich, dass die Tellurerze etwas von diesem Stoffe enthalten möchten. Diese Vermuthung gab mir Veranlassung den neuen Stoff Selenium, vom griechischen Namen des Mondes, zu nennen. Die Vermuthung mag sich nun bestätigen oder nicht, so kann er doch diesen Namen behalten, weil er doch einen Namen braucht.

(Since pure tellurium does not give off this smell, either in the metallic or oxidized state, I suspect that the tellurium ores may contain some of this substance. This suspicion led me to name the new substance selenium, from the Greek name for the moon. Whether or not this suspicion is confirmed, it can still keep this name because it needs a name.)

Sources:

Berzelius, Jöns Jacob. “Ein neues mineralisches Alkali und ein neues Metall” (27 January 1818). Journal für Chemie und Physik, 21, 1817, 44–48 at 47–48. HathiTrust Digital Archive. (Berzelius’s letter is dated 1818, while the volume of the journal is dated 1817; presumably the 1817 volume was published late.)

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. selenium, n.

Image credit: Albert Aublet, 1880; photo by Sotheby’s, New York, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.

mind-meld

Leonard Nimoy, dressed as Mr. Spock with moustache and goatee, placing his hand on the face of DeForest Kelley/Dr. McCoy

Evil Spock conducts a mind-meld with Good Dr. McCoy in the Star Trek: TOS episode “Mirror, Mirror.”

5 February 2025

Science fiction is a productive source of neologisms. Sometimes what is envisioned in fiction enters the lexicon before science makes it a reality, and sometimes futuristic and fantastic concepts that can never be real enter the language through the genre. When we talk of the intersection between science fiction and popular culture, conversation inevitably turns to Star Trek. The original television series ran from 1966–69 and bequeathed to us any number of spin-off series, movies, cartoons, and books, but it also left us with an enriched vocabulary. Alongside phasers and warp speed, the TV show gave us the mind-meld.

In the TV series, mind-melding is an ability possessed by the telepathic race of Vulcans to join the thoughts of two individuals. The 1968 book The Making of Star Trek describes the ability thusly:

Another unique Vulcan ability exhibited by Spock is a type of ESP that the Vulcans refer to as “mind-melding.” He can merge his mind with that of another intelligence and read its thoughts. While he will use this ability when circumstances make it absolutely necessary, he dislikes doing so because the process requires emotional contact as well, thus robbing him of his stoic mask and revealing too much of his inner self. The physical cost of this process is also quite high.

In the series Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–05), set several generations before the original series, mind-melding is portrayed as an ability that is forbidden, practiced only by a cult considered to be subversive. Evidently in the intervening generations its use became permitted, although still not widespread. 

The term first appears in the script for the episode “Elaan of Troyius.” The script for the episode was penned by J. M. Lucas on 23 May 1968, before The Making of Star Trek was published. The episode aired on 20 December:

Mr. Spock, […] he refuses to talk. I’ll need you for the Vulcan mind-meld.

Ironically, while it is named in the episode, Spock does not actually conduct a mind-meld in it.

While the script for “Elaan of Troyius” is the earliest known use of the term, the episode “Spectre of the Gun” (aired 25 October 1968) was the first on-air use of the term, when Kirk refers to it as the Vulcan mind-meld.

These were the first uses of mind-meld, but it wasn’t the first use of the concept in the series, which went by a variety of names. Spock’s telepathic ability appears without a name several times in the series’s first season. It is dubbed the Vulcan mind probe in the second-season episode “The Changeling” (aired 29 September 1967). In the episode “Patterns of Force” (aired 16 February 1968), Kirk also refers to it as the Vulcan mind probe. And in “By Any Other Name” (aired 23 February 1968), Kirk repeats Vulcan mind probe, while Dr. McCoy calls it a mind touch. Spock calls it the Vulcan mind fusion in the third-season episode “The Paradise Syndrome” (aired 4 October 1968). And In “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (aired 18 October 1968) Spock refers to it as a mind link eleven times, more uses than all the other names for the ability in the original series, the movies starring the cast of the original series, and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation put together. The ability is featured twice in the animated series (1973–75), both times called the Vulcan mind touch. It is not until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) does mind-meld become cemented in the Star Trek universe as the name for the ability. No other names for the ability are used in the Star Trek universe after this.

While the word mind-meld is original to Star Trek, the TV series did not invent the concept. In his 1954 short story The Censors, J. F. Burke uses the term mind link to describe a similar ability. Other writers have used the phrase mind link since, but it was Star Trek that brought the concept to and cemented it in the public consciousness.

Within a decade after its appearance in the TV series, mind-meld was being used to refer to a deep understanding or non-verbal communication between two people. It appears in the pages of the Washington Star on 21 November 1976:

On Broadway, “Equus”—they highly stylized dramatization of the mind meld between a psychiatrist and his young patient—is the artistic and commercial dramatic success of the year.

One of the signs that a word has caught on and become a permanent part of the lexicon is when it becomes another part of speech. Mind-meld has become a verb, appearing as early as 1976 in a cartoon parody of a science fiction fan convention, Phil Foglio’s, And Then ... New York:

We’re backstage still waiting for Leonard Nimoy, who has gone thru 3 albums, mind-melded with 4 Trekkies and a Wells Fargo guard, faith healed a sick cat, and is halfway thru his current book.

The verb appears in a science-fiction-but-non-Star Trek context in Sharyn McCrumb’s 1988 superbly named Bimbos of the Death Sun, a mystery novel set at a sci-fi convention. In the passage in question an organizer of a sci-fi convention has to appease a famous sci-fi writer who has asked for a particular type of British candy:

“We need some British candy, folks! Anybody got any? All help will be appreciated.”

A wave of shrugs passed through the clumps of people, but after a few moments of silence, a blonde girl in a green tunic and blue body-paint approached them. “British,” she said shyly to Diefenbaker. “Like . . . does that include Scotland?”

Diefenbaker hastily changed a snicker into an encouraging smile. “Yes, Kathy. Indeed it does. Why?”

She twisted her yellow sash and shifted from one foot to the other in an effort of concentration.  “Well . . . like I met this guy today, you know, in the elevator, and he said he was from Scotland, but he wasn’t dressed up or anything. He was just in regular old jeans. I’d say he was a mundane. But he might like candy!”

“I’ll find him if I have to mind-meld the desk clerk!” cried Miles, hurrying away.

And you know a pop culture reference has come of age when a major politician flubs it. At a press conference on 1 March 2013 US President Barack Obama melded two different strains of science fiction when he said:

Most people agree that I’m presenting a fair deal. The fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a “Jedi mind-meld” with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.

He, of course, meant Jedi mind trick, which is another thing altogether and from Star Wars, not Star Trek.

What is most curious about mind-meld, however, is how it became the standard term in fan discourse before the writers of the Star Trek universe had settled on the term. Mind-meld is not the favored term in the original series, yet it is the one that fans adopted. It was only at the end of the 1970s, with the first of the Star Trek movies, that mind meld became the dominant term in the universe’s canon. It may be that the book The Making of Star Trek had an influence on fans more than on the series’s writers, or it may be that the alliterative mind-meld is simply more pleasing to the ear than mind link or mind probe.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Burke, J. F. “The Censors.” Authentic Science Fiction, 41, 15 January 1954, 98–112 at 105. Archive.org.

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, 18 February 2021, s.v. mind-meld, n.; 17 November 2024, s.v. mindmeld, v., mindlink, n.

McCollum, Charlie. “A Series of Movies that Can Blow Your Mind.” Washington Star (Washington, DC), 21 November 1976, G-7/1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

McCrumb, Sharyn. Bimbos of the Death Sun. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: TSR, 1988, 19–21. Archive.org.

Meta Trek. “A Mind Meld by any Other Name | Star Trek: TOS.” YouTube, 2022.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, 1999, mind-meld, n.; 2006, mind-meld, v.

Whitfield, Stephen E. and Gene Roddenberry. The Making of Star Trek. New York: Ballantine, 1968, 227. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Desilu Productions/Paramount Television, 1967. Fair use of a single frame from a television episode to illustrate the topic under discussion.

meh

Cartoon characters Lisa and Bart Simpson sitting on a couch and saying, “meh”

Lisa and Bart Simpson saying “meh” in The Simpsons 2001 episode “Hungry Hungry Homer”

3 February 2025

Meh is an interjection expressing apathy or uninterest. We don’t know exactly when people began using it, nor where it comes from. Two explanations are commonly proffered. The first is that it is simply a transcription of an inarticulate, oral grunt or sigh. The second is that it comes from the Yiddish מע (me), which can be an interjection with the senses of “so-so” and “be it as it may.”

The interjection mneh appears in W.H. Auden’s 1969 poem Moon Landing, expressing his apathy over watching the historical event on television:

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.
Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert
     and was not charmed: give me a watered
     lively garden, remote from blatherers

It is possible that Auden was picking up on the Yiddish usage. While he was not Jewish, he was living in New York in 1969 and may have heard the interjection and incorporated it into his vocabulary.

The meh transcription appears by 1992, when it is recorded in a Usenet discussion about the television program Melrose Place:

>>So is the TH cute?

>YES!!

Meh... far too Ken-doll for me…

(TH stands for token homosexual.)

But it would be the repeated use of the interjection on the animated television show The Simpsons that would catapult meh into the mainstream. It was first used on that show in October 1994 in the episode “Sideshow Bob Roberts,” in which Lisa is investigating possible voter fraud at the Springfield library:

Librarian: Here you go … the results of last month’s mayor election, all 48,000 voters and who each one of them voted for.

Lisa: I thought this was a secret ballot.

Librarian: Meh.

(Not relevant to the history of meh, but just before this exchange Lisa utters this prescient line, “I can’t believe a convicted felon would get so many votes.”)

But the exchange that really cemented meh in the public consciousness was this one from the March 2001 episode “Hungry Hungry Homer”:

Homer (after watching Blockoland commercial): Kids … how would you … like to go … to … Blockoland?

Bart & Lisa (in unison): Meh.

Homer: But the TV gave me the impression that…

Bart: We said meh.

Lisa: M-E-H. Meh.

The long association of Yiddish with comedy could be the inspiration for the Simpsons writers using the term. But we can’t say with absolute confidence that the interjection as we know it comes from the Yiddish.

Meh can also be used as an adjective. This usage dates to at least 2007, when the following appears in a 27 January 2007 review of the television show 24:

Let's be frank here: 24 has lost its mind. The hinges were always loose, but this sixth series is something else. It opened last week with Jack mute, scarred and bearded following months of torture in a secret Chinese prison. The man could scarcely walk. Two hours later he was cheerfully high-kicking a suicide bomber out the back of a train.

Nuts. But somehow it all seemed, to use a bit of internet parlance, a bit “meh.”

Sources:

Auden, W.H. “Moon Landing.” The New Yorker, 6 September 1969, 38/2.  

Bierma, Nathan. “‘Meh’ Joins Ranks of Little Words that Do Grunt Work.” Chicago Tribune, 13 April 2007, D2/1-2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Brooker, Charlie. “The Guide: Charlie Brookers Screen Burn.” The Guardian (London), 27 January 2007, 52. ProQuest Newspapers.

Dorrance, John. “Yes, I Actually Watched Melrose Place.” Usenet: soc.motss, 10 July 1992. Google Groups.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. meh, adj.

Groening, Matt, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon. “Hungry Hungry Homer.” The Simpsons, episode 12.15, 4 March 2001.

———. “Sideshow Bob Roberts.” The Simpsons, episode 6.5, 9 October 1994.

Harkavy, Alexander. Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary, fourth edition. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1928, 307/1, s.v. מע. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Meh.” Languagehat.com, 13 April 2007.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2015, s.v. meh, int. & adj.

Yagoda, Ben. “Pardon the Interjection.” Slate.com, 16 February 2007.

Zimmer, Ben. “Meh-ness to Society.” Language Log, 8 June 2006.

———. “Three Scenes in the Life of ‘meh.’” Language Log, 26 February 2012.

Image credit: Gracie Films and 20th Century Fox Television, 2001. Fair use of a single still frame from a television program to illustrate the topic under discussion.

seaborgium

B&W photo of a man in a suit standing behind a lab bench with chemical equipment. A periodic table hangs on the wall behind.

Glenn T. Seaborg in 1950

31 January 2025

Seaborgium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 106 and the symbol Sg. Its most stable isotopes have half lives of only a few minutes, and it has no applications other than pure research. The element is named after chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, who not only led the discovery of this element, but was instrumental in the discovery of several transuranic elements, most notably plutonium. Despite Seaborg’s contributions to nuclear chemistry, the naming was controversial. Not only was credit for the 1974 discovery of 106 embroiled in a dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union, but this was the first element to be named after a living person, and many thought that inappropriate.

But element 106 is not the first to be dubbed seaborgium. Several other transuranic elements (99, 100, and 105) have been unofficially named after Seaborg.

Seaborg’s name was floated as a potential element name as early as 1953. A September 1953 article in the journal Names noted that his name was being considered for the next element to be discovered:

Apparently more elements will be produced by the irradiative techniques of the cyclotron; elements no. 99 to no. 103 have already been predicted. The name seaborgium has already been suggested for the next discovered element, in recognition of Seaborg's achievements.

And a few months later, seaborgium was proposed as the name for element 99 (now known as einsteinium). From Newsweek of 15 February 1954:

Seaborg participated in the discovery of five previous man-made elements and is credited with a guiding role in the finding of No. 99. To the discoverers, who have the privilege of naming the new element, one name has already been suggested: seaborgium.

Element 106 was first created in 1971 by a team led by Albert Ghiorso at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but they did not recognize the significance at the time. In 1974, a Soviet team lead by Yuri Oganessian announced they had synthesized element 106 at their facility in Dubna, Russia. Following this announcement, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Seaborg and that included Ghiorso, repeated the 1971 experiment and found their data was in accord with the earlier data, showing that 106 had been synthesized in 1971.

The dispute over primacy of discovery raged on until 1992, when a joint working group of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) concluded that the evidence for the Soviet team’s discovery was insufficient, and credit should go to the Berkeley team. But the controversy over the element’s name did not end.

In 1994, the Berkeley team announced their preference for 106’s name was seaborgium. As reported by the San Francisco Examiner of 13 March 1994:

Element 106, which was created in a particle accelerator, has been named “seaborgium” after Dr. Glenn Seaborg, Nobel Prize winner and nuclear pioneer.

The announcement is to be made Sunday [13 March] by Seaborg’s associate Kenneth Hulet at the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting in San Diego, a society spokesperson said.

Objections to the name were immediately raised again, this time over naming the element for a living person. As a result, IUPAC initially rejected the name. But that decision came under fire for disregarding the right of discoverers to name their discoveries, and in 1998 IUPAC officially recognized seaborgium as the name for element 106.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Davidson, Keay. “Element Named After Berkeley Scientist.” San Francisco Examiner, 13 March 1994, B-2/3–4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Ellis, Fred, Jr. “Naming of Chemical Elements.” Names, 1.3, September 1953, 163–76 at 172. American Name Society.

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

“Names and Symbols of Transfermium Elements (IUPAC Recommendations 1997),” Chemistry International, 20.2, 1998, 37–38 at 38. IUPAC.org.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2012, s.v. seaborgium, n.

“Violent New Element.” Newsweek, 15 February 1954, 59/2. ProQuest Magazines.

Photo credit: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1950. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.