Etymology often makes no sense. Humphrey Davy, its discoverer and a Brit, himself sometimes used the "um" ending. Noah Webster put that version in his American dictionary.
And this ending is closer to some of those in the (Greek/Latin) names of elements 'known to the ancients:' stannum (tin), plumbum (lead), silver (argentum), gold (aurum). Yet 'ium' was used for natrium (sodium) and kalium (potassium). Later discoveries, maybe spurred by a frenzy to fill the holes on Mendeleyev's periodic table, seemed to be done by chemists generally enamored by 'ium.' The 19th century was a pretty contentious era in chemistry. There may have been bitter feuds over competing name proposals. Tungsten won out over wolfram (which survives with its symbol 'W'), and niobium over columbium (the latter consigned completely to the dustbin of history).
Thanks for adding to the discussion. On the other end of a car, U.S. 'hood' is U.K. 'bonnet.' Also, is 'truck' used in the U.K. for a railway freight car?
This is helpful. Thanks.
I messed up the consistency of the parens. Sorry.
Thanks. I didn't know that about 'entree,' but it makes sense. (I'm too lazy to code the accented e.)
I believe in France they are called trams as well. In Germany they are Straßenbahn. (No, I don't know what that letter in the middle is.) In New York, they were usually called trolleys or trolley cars, and they usually ran off overhead wires too. Although there were also places that had "conduits," slots in the street that contained a third rail. Then there were also horse-cars, cable cars, and various other means of propulsion. Isn't AH a great place to find out transit terminology? And people think it's all about sex.
Previous post was directed to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß(No, I don't know what that letter in the middle is.)
Have you ever fucked in a gondola lift? My dear man, it is all about sex to a writer of sex.I believe in France they are called trams as well. In Germany they are Straßenbahn. (No, I don't know what that letter in the middle is.) In New York, they were usually called trolleys or trolley cars, and they usually ran off overhead wires too. Although there were also places that had "conduits," slots in the street that contained a third rail. Then there were also horse-cars, cable cars, and various other means of propulsion. Isn't AH a great place to find out transit terminology? And people think it's all about sex.
I knew somebody would tell me.
I have a story on another site about two people having sex on a subway train. The only way that got away with it was that it was around 3:00 AM, and the D train used to get stuck, mostly empty, for a while in the tunnel before the last stop. Why it got stuck at that hour was a mystery I still haven't figured out.Have you ever fucked in a gondola lift? My dear man, it is all about sex to a writer of sex.
Depends, and they aren't just for skiing. You can ride someplace from the ground to a resort. The distance determines the time. We were the only two in the car, there was a power failure, and there we were, dead of night, swaying a bit, the other car going down, in site but so dark you couldn't see anyone. We got the car to rocking, though! It was more than 20 years ago in the French Alps—quite a lot of fun.
Straßenbahn literally means street-train. (the Eszett or 'scharfes S' - sharp S - is used as a double S in Germany and Austria but not Switzerland. Since I left school with reasonably-fluent German, they've had two spelling reforms, including restricting ß to only being used after long vowels. Add my weakness in any dialect or colloquialisms, and I sound like an old lady...)I believe in France they are called trams as well. In Germany they are Straßenbahn. (No, I don't know what that letter in the middle is.) In New York, they were usually called trolleys or trolley cars, and they usually ran off overhead wires too. Although there were also places that had "conduits," slots in the street that contained a third rail. Then there were also horse-cars, cable cars, and various other means of propulsion. Isn't AH a great place to find out transit terminology? And people think it's all about sex.
Okay, if we are really getting into the nitty-gritty: in Britain trolleybuses were called trolleys. (I don't think there are any left in the British Isles.) In the U.S., buses with overhead wires are specifically called trolleybuses or trackless trolleys. (There are only five systems left in the U.S., and one or two in Canada.) Otherwise, the word "trolley" is used in certain cities to indicate an electric streetcar. (Like the thing Judy Garland is on in Meet Me In St. Louis.)
Must be nice to be rich.
I was joking about the maths part, though I'll still never add the s.
When I can understand a Birmingham accent, maybe I'll care about your input on the metal in my beer can.
The 'mains supply' in the UK these days is 240v, AC, 50Hz.
Not rich, comfortable.
We spell it Aluminum in the US. So do the Canadians. Aluminum is actually of earlier vintage. The discoverer of the metal named it Alumium, then changed it to Aluminum. Easier to pronounce, I'd guess. Aluminium came later, though in the same period. The Brits like to add syllables to words for the hell of it, but they don't always send us the memo. To be fair, we'd ignore the memo anyway, because pointless extra syllable....
Anyway, you don't say, molybedenium or platininium, and you changed tantalium to tantalum, so the consistency argument holds water like a tennis racket. And English is a notoriously inconsistent language to begin with. Its base is Germanic, overrun by Latin, and repeatedly invaded by French. A hodge-podge of different languages tossed into a blender with bits pilfered willy-nilly from other sources. It draws spelling and pronunciation conventions from every direction. Why is weigh pronounced way, while Leigh is pronounced Lee? I have no good answers.
So I don't consult the British on how to run a language. They've already made a mess of this one.
In any case, both spellings of our contentious metal are recognized and considered grammatical, and no one gets confused by them. The fact that our version annoys the Brits is a an unintended bonus.
In any case, you'll find a lot of "Americanisms" originated in the British Isles. The US had multiple waves of Irish and Scottish immigration, and Irish backgrounds are more common than English heritage in much of the US. A lot of our pronunciations are variations of Irish dialects, regionalized over time to their American forms.
And it's not like the UK doesn't have its share of regional dialects. You can't even keep your little island straight, and you want to muck around in our continent?
For those who don't get my admittedly wonky sense of humor, I'm kidding. I bear no ill will against the Brits for their uneccesary corruption of the word Aluminum. But I stand by my facts. I'm a word nerd, and I've researched this. Our version is the original. Their version is a tragic misspelling. I don't hold it against them.
Even Lit's built in spell checker recognizes the truth. Aluminium gets flagged as a spelling error.
Canny means shrewd, prudent, clever, astute, or thrifty, while uncanny means supernatural, weird, or unsettling. Canny is Scottish uncanny is not. How weird is that? Oh, it's uncanny, actually.
