趣味英语起源论第555期:Aluminium 铝
日期:2014-04-10 09:00

(单词翻译:单击)

世间万物的存在,必定有其存在的价值和意义,每一个事物的产生必定有其产生的根源,并非凭空而降。

Aluminium 铝


铝的命名源自拉丁文Alumen,这一名词中世纪在欧洲是对具有收敛性矾的总称,它的英文名称是Aluminium,元素符号为Al,我国从它的第二音节译为铝。

Aluminium comes from a coinage by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who discovered the metal. His first suggestion was alumium, which he put forward in Volume 98 of the Transactions of the Royal Society 1808: ‘Had I been so fortunate as … 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’. He based it on Latin alūmen ‘alum’ (alum is a sulphate of aluminium, and the word alum, a 14th-century borrowing from French, derives ultimately from alūmen; alumina is an oxide of aluminium, and the word alumina is a modern Latin formation based on alūmen, which entered English at the end of the 18th century); and alūmen may be linked with Latin alūta skins dried for making leather, using alum’. Davy soon changed his mind, however, and in 1812 put forward the term aluminum – which remains the word used in American English to this day. British English, though, has preferred the form aluminium, which was mooted contemporaneously with aluminum on grounds of classical ‘correctness’: ‘Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound’, Quarterly Review 1812.


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重点单词
  • ultimatelyadv. 最后,最终
  • preferencen. 偏爱,优先,喜爱物
  • aluminumn. 铝
  • leathern. 皮革,皮制品 adj. 皮革制的 vt. 用皮革覆
  • fortunateadj. 幸运的,侥幸的
  • formationn. 构造,编队,形成,队形,[地]地层