Both aluminum And aluminum has a long history of use refers to the metallic element (often used as foil to wrap food). Both date to the early 19th century, derived from the word aluminum. Aluminum became popular in the United States and Canada, while aluminum became popular throughout the rest of the English-speaking world.
Whether you use shiny thin sheet metal to wrap and wrap food or to make head guards, you’ll most likely call it aluminum foil if you’re on the American side of the Atlantic, and aluminum foil if you’re on the European side (or near a completely different ocean).
Why so? Your dictionary is here to answer that question.
And to give you something to read while your leftovers heat up.
Origins in ‘Alumina’
Although aluminum (as we say in the US) is the most abundant of all the metallic elements in the Earth’s crust, it does not exist as a metal in nature; instead, it exists in compounds found in most rocks as well as in plants and animals. from aluminum, which refers to an oxide of aluminum, has been in use since 1790, but we didn’t start talking about the element itself until a few years later. That’s when a British chemist named Sir Humphry Davy appeared in the field of vocabulary. Here’s from him Electrochemical study of the decay of the earthread to the Royal Society on June 30, 1808:
If I had been fortunate enough to have more solid evidence on the subject, and had purchased the metalloids I was looking for, I should have suggested to them the names silicium, alumium, zirconium and glucium.
That’s right: Davy didn’t call it by one of the names we use today. Instead, he used the term aluminum (and only in theory), a perfectly reasonable coinage from Latin aluminum with a nice -ium the end.
Leave ‘-ium’ or Don’t put ‘-ium’
In some other universes, the story of the word ends there. But it seems Davy has had a change of heart—and perhaps immediately. The Oxford English Dictionary reports that in one of his lectures in 1809 and published in 1810, Davy did not use the term. aluminumbut only mentioning good old alumina like aluminum. By 1812, Davy had modified his coinage, choosing instead aluminum. But the year before, another scientist, reviewing another of Davy’s lectures, posited aluminumwith beauty -ium that was all too familiar in kali And sodium (which incidentally Davy also came up with).
Noah Webster, in 1828 American English Dictionarydetermined aluminum is “The name given to the supposed metal base of alumina.” Up to the year 1909 Webster’s New International Dictionaryboth aluminum And aluminum was noted at the entry of the word and the following note is included:
The word was first suggested by Davy as aluminumand was changed by him to aluminum; but in the end it was done aluminum to match the analogy of sodium, kalietc. Form aluminum commonly used in mining, manufacturing and commerce in the United States; form aluminum used with practical consistency in the United Kingdom and generally by chemists in the United States.
In 1934 Webster’s Second International Dictionary, aluminum was noted as “especially British” and the last line of that note was corrected:
Form aluminum commonly used in the United States; form aluminum used in the United Kingdom and by some chemists in the United States.
Officially adopted by the American Chemical Society (ACS) aluminum in 1925, but it was not until 1990 that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) accepted aluminum as international standard.
And so we land today: with aluminum used by English speakers in North America, and aluminum used everywhere else. Wrap your food and protect your head accordingly.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
