this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
500 points (88.6% liked)
Memes
10809 readers
1052 users here now
Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
- Wait at least 2 months before reposting
- No explicitly political content (about political figures, political events, elections and so on), !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca can be better place for that
- Use NSFW marking accordingly
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
- Odota ainakin 2 kuukautta ennen meemin postaamista uudelleen
- Ei selkeän poliittista sisältöä (poliitikoista, poliittisista tapahtumista, vaaleista jne) parempi paikka esim. !politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
- Merkitse K18-sisältö tarpeen mukaan
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
i thought the original name was alumium?
Alumina ore was smelted/refined to isolate the pure metal.
Using the preexisting naming convention that ore->metal goes a->um, the discoverer of the element named it Aluminum.
Later, British chemists got mad that their US naming standard was different from their own standard.
no.
the discoverer, humphry davy, was english. the name is originally the english "alum" and the latin "ium", which was criticized because names were traditionally constructed from latin roots. european scientists suggested "aluminium", for "element created from alum", but the year after that, when davy published a chemistry book, he spelled it "aluminum". this took hold in britain, but the rest of europe used "aluminium" so they standardized.
a few years later, when the word first appeared in an american dictionary, only the "num" spelling was added. scientists kept using "-ium" but the general populace went on the dictionary definition until it won out. the "american" spelling was only accepted by american scientists about 110 years after the element was discovered.
Wait, so the original name is alumium? Fuck yeah! From now on I'll go with that one!
So the guy who discovered it published a book and named his discovery in his book "aluminum"?
Well case closed. It's aluminum.
and then scientific consensus made him change it. there was a clique of, quote, "patriotic" englishmen who, worried about "foreign influences", kept using the misspelling, but they were very few and very much gone by the time the americans changed their minds.