An English Refresher
- Thread starter Ron Earp
- Start date
And for the Americans, when you have that worked out you may find the time to put the 'u' back into words like humour, reinstate 's' to its rightful place (z does have its uses but seriously guys...), flip 'er' back to 're' in words like centre, etc. ;p
I don't mean to criticise...
Oh, and tell the people at Apple - I'm sick of having to keep fixing things they 'fix'. I've found myself giving into them recently...
Tim.
I don't mean to criticise...
Oh, and tell the people at Apple - I'm sick of having to keep fixing things they 'fix'. I've found myself giving into them recently...
Tim.
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
We won the wars. We decide spelling. Bow, islander! Bow!
And for the Americans, when you have that worked out you may find the time to put the 'u' back into words like humour, reinstate 's' to its rightful place (z does have its uses but seriously guys...), flip 'er' back to 're' in words like centre, etc. ;p
I don't mean to criticise...
Oh, and tell the people at Apple - I'm sick of having to keep fixing things they 'fix'. I've found myself giving into them recently...
Tim.
To see the rest of the cartoons in that series, vist:
What we SHOULD have been taught in our senior year of high school - The Oatmeal
What we SHOULD have been taught in our senior year of high school - The Oatmeal
Pete McCluskey.
Lifetime Supporter
Jeff that is bullshit we all Know John Wayne won the wars.
Peter Delaney
GT40s Supporter
To quote Winston Churchill, who was once chided for ending a sentence with a participle :
"This is the sort of rubbish, up with which, I will not put" !!
Kind Regards,
Peter D.
"This is the sort of rubbish, up with which, I will not put" !!
Kind Regards,
Peter D.
Do you mean zed or zee?
So many examples, so little time.
Some irritating ones:
Tonite,
Sox,
Lite.
In some cases I think it's similar to the U.S. mass production success story of yesteryear - simplify everything: If two words sound the same then use the same spelling etc.
Odd that they won't go metric though.
Tim.
So many examples, so little time.
Some irritating ones:
Tonite,
Sox,
Lite.
In some cases I think it's similar to the U.S. mass production success story of yesteryear - simplify everything: If two words sound the same then use the same spelling etc.
Odd that they won't go metric though.
Tim.
Last edited:
Hehe, you won the same wars we did I believe and unlike you we were cannon fod... er, there, from the start. ;p
But ok, I'll let you have 'aluminum'.
Tim.
The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina. The citation is from the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: "Had I been so fortunate as to have obtained more certain evidences on this subject, and to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium."<sup id="cite_ref-60" class="reference">[61]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-61" class="reference">[62]</sup>
Davy settled on aluminum by the time he published his 1812 book Chemical Philosophy: "This substance appears to contain a peculiar metal, but as yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state, though alloys of it with other metalline substances have been procured sufficiently distinct to indicate the probable nature of alumina."<sup id="cite_ref-Davy1812_62-0" class="reference">[63]</sup> But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, in a review of Davy's book, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."<sup id="cite_ref-63" class="reference">[64]</sup>
The -ium suffix conformed to the precedent set in other newly discovered elements of the time: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time, as for example platinum, known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, discovered in 1778, and tantalum, discovered in 1802. The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide, as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.
The spelling used throughout the 19th century by most U.S. chemists was aluminium, but common usage is less clear.<sup id="cite_ref-wwwords_64-0" class="reference">[65]</sup> The aluminum spelling is used in the Webster's Dictionary of 1828. In his advertising handbill for his new electrolytic method of producing the metal 1892, Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling, despite his constant use of the -ium spelling in all the patents<sup id="cite_ref-Hall-patent_53-1" class="reference">[54]</sup> he filed between 1886 and 1903.<sup id="cite_ref-65" class="reference">[66]</sup> It has consequently been suggested that the spelling reflects an easier to pronounce word with one fewer syllable, or that the spelling on the flier was a mistake. *** Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America; the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, though, continued to use the -ium version.
***That sounds about rite..
Keith, if you liked that, try this one!
A real social statment.
Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons In The Park - now on DVD - YouTube
A real social statment.
Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons In The Park - now on DVD - YouTube
