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aluminium: aluminium: [19] 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.
=> alum
alumnus: alumnus: see alma mater
asylum: asylum: [15] Greek sulon meant ‘right of seizure’. With the addition of the negative prefix a- ‘not’ this was turned into the adjective ásūlos ‘inviolable’, which in turn was nominalized as āsūlon ‘refuge’. When it first entered English, via Latin asylum, it was used specifically for ‘place of sanctuary for hunted criminals and others’ (a meaning reflected in modern English ‘political asylum’), and it was not until the mid 18th century that it came to be applied to mental hospitals.
calumny: calumny: see challenge
cerebellum: cerebellum: see saveloy
clumsy: clumsy: [16] When clumsy first appeared on the scene around 1600, both it and the presumably related but now obsolete clumse were used not only for ‘awkward’ but also for ‘numb with cold’. This, and the fact that the word’s nearest apparent relatives are Scandinavian (such as Swedish dialect klumsig ‘numb, clumsy’), suggests that the notion originally contained in them was of being torpid from cold – so cold that one is sluggish and cannot coordinate one’s actions.
column: column: [15] The notion underlying column is of ‘height, command, extremity’. It comes, via Old French colomne, from Latin columna ‘pillar’, which was probably a derivative of columen, culmen ‘top, summit’ (from which English also gets culminate). It goes back ultimately to a base *kol-, *kel-, distant ancestor of English excel and hill. The word’s application to vertical sections of printed matter dates from the 15th century, but its transference to that which is written (as in ‘write a weekly newspaper column’) is a 20thcentury development.
=> culminate, excel, hill
emolument: emolument: [15] Just as a salary was originally a ‘payment for salt’, so emolument appears to have been a particular kind of payment – in this case for flour – which later became generalized in meaning. Latin ēmolere meant ‘grind out’ (it was a compound verb formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and molere ‘grind’, a relative of English mill and meal ‘ground grain’), and hence the derivative ēmolumentum was used originally for ‘fee paid to a miller for grinding grain’. The metaphorical sense ‘gain’ was already present in classical Latin.
=> meal, mill
illuminate: illuminate: [16] Etymologically, illuminate is a parallel construction to enlighten. It was formed in the late Latin period from the prefix in- and lūmen ‘light’ (source of English luminous). The past participle of the resulting illumināre gave English illuminate. The medieval-sounding sense ‘illustrate manuscripts’ is actually quite recent, replacing in the 18th century the parallel formation enlumine, acquired by English in the 14th century via Old French enluminer from medieval Latin inlūmināre. Illumine [14] came via Old French illuminer. Illustrate is closely related.
=> illustrate, luminous
incunabulum: incunabulum: [19] An incunabulum is a book printed before 1501. But etymologically the word has nothing to do with books. It comes from the Latin plural noun incūnābula, which had a range of meanings, including ‘swaddling clothes’, ‘cradle’, and ‘infancy’, which point back to its original source, Latin cūnae ‘cradle’. Nineteenth-century antiquarians and bibliographers applied the term to early printed books since they represented the ‘infancy’ of book production.
lumbago: lumbago: see loin
lumbar: lumbar: see loin
lumber: lumber: [14] Swedish has a dialectal verb loma ‘move heavily’, which is the only clue we have to the antecedents of the otherwise mysterious English verb lumber. The noun, too, which first appears in the 16th century, is difficult to account for. In the absence of any other convincing candidates, it is presumed to have been derived from the verb (its earliest recorded sense is ‘useless or inconvenient articles’, plausibly close to the verb; ‘cut timber’ did not emerge until the 17th century, in North America).
luminous: luminous: see light
lump: lump: [13] The origins of lump are obscure. It presumably emerged from an imperfectly recorded medieval Germanic substratum of words for ‘coarse or shapeless things’ (also represented perhaps by Low German lump ‘coarse, heavy’ and Dutch lomp ‘rag’), but where this began is not known. The lump of like it or lump it [19] is a different word, of even more mysterious ancestry.
pendulum: pendulum: [17] A pendulum is etymologically simply something that ‘hangs’. It is a noun use of the neuter form of the Latin adjective pendulus ‘hanging’ (source of English pendulous [18]). This was a derivative of the verb pendēre ‘hang’, which has contributed a wide range of words to English, among them penchant [17], pendant [14], pendent [15], pending [17], and penthouse, and derived forms such as append [15], appendix [16], depend, impend [16], perpendicular [14], and suspend.
=> append, appendix, depend, impend, penchant, pendant, pendent, penthouse, perpendicular, suspend
plum: plum: [OE] Plum and prune ‘dried plum’ are ultimately the same word. Their common ancestor was Greek proumnon, a word which originated somewhere in Asia Minor. This was later contracted to prounon, and borrowed into Latin as prōnum. Its plural prōna came to be regarded in post-classical times as a singular, and this is where English gets prune from, but prōna was also borrowed into prehistoric Germanic, and many of its descendants here have had their r changed to l (the two are close together phonetically) – hence German pflaume, Swedish plommon, and English plum.
=> prune
plumb: plumb: [13] Plumb comes via Old French *plombe from Latin plumbum ‘lead’, a word of uncertain origin. Of its modern English uses, the verbal ‘sound the depths’ comes from the use of a line weighted with lead (a plumb line) to measure the depth of water and the adverbial ‘exactly’ from the use of a similar line to determine verticality. Related words in English include aplomb; plumber [14] (originally simply a ‘worker in lead’, but eventually, since water pipes were once made of lead, a ‘pipe-layer’); plummet [14] (a diminutive form coined in Old French); and plunge [14] (from the Vulgar Latin derivative *plumbicāre ‘sound with a plumb’).
=> aplomb, plumber, plummet, plunge
plume: plume: [14] Latin plūma originally denoted ‘down, feathers’ (it is probably related to English fleece). Eventually, though, it came to signify a ‘single feather’, and evolved in this sense to Italian piuma, Spanish pluma, and French plume – source of English plume. The derivative plumage [15] originated in Old French.
=> fleece, plumage
plummet: plummet: see plumb
vellum: vellum: see veal
volume: volume: [14] Volume is one of a sizeable family of English words that go back to Latin volvere ‘roll, turn’. Others include convolution [16], convolvulus [16], devolution [16], evolution, involve [14], revolt, revolution, revolve, vault, volte-face [19], and voluble [16]. Volume itself comes via Old French volum from Latin volūmen, a derivative of volvere.

The sense ‘book’ evolved from the notion of a ‘roll’ of parchment. The word came to have connotations of a ‘big’ book, and this gave rise in the 16th century to the sense ‘size of a book’. By the 17th century this had broadened out to ‘size’ in general, but the modern sense ‘size of sound’ did not emerge until the early 19th century. Latin volvere itself came ultimately from the Indo- European base *wol-, *wel- ‘turn’, which also produced English wallow.
=> convolution, convolvulus, devolution, evolution, involve, revolt, revolution, revolve, vault, volte-face, voluble, wallow
alum (n.): late 14c., "whitish mineral salt used as an astringent, dye, etc.," from Old French alum, from Latin alumen "alum," literally "bitter salt," cognate with Greek aludoimos "bitter" and perhaps with English ale.
aluminium: see aluminum.
aluminum (n.): 1812, coined by English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), from alumina, name given 18c. to aluminum oxide, from Latin alumen "alum" (see alum). Davy originally called it alumium (1808), then amended this to aluminum, which remains the U.S. word, but British editors in 1812 further amended it to aluminium, the modern preferred British form, to better harmonize with other metallic element names (sodium, potassium, etc.).
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]
alumna (n.): see alumnus.
alumnae (n.): see alumnus.
alumni (n.): see alumnus.
alumnus (n.): 1640s, from Latin alumnus "a pupil," literally "foster son," vestigial present passive participle of alere "to nourish" (see old), with ending akin to Greek -omenos. Plural is alumni. Fem. is alumna (1882), fem. plural alumnae.
antebellum (adj.): also ante-bellum, from Latin phrase ante bellum, literally "before the war;" see ante- + bellicose. In U.S., usually in reference to the American Civil War (1861-65); first attested in a June 14, 1862, entry in Mary Chesnut's diary.
asylum (n.): early 15c., earlier asile (late 14c.), from Latin asylum "sanctuary," from Greek asylon "refuge," noun use of neuter of asylos "inviolable, safe from violence," especially of persons seeking protection, from a- "without" + syle "right of seizure." So literally "an inviolable place." General sense of "safe or secure place" is from 1640s; meaning "benevolent institution to shelter some class of persons" is from 1776.
bioluminescence (n.): also bio-luminescence, 1909; see bio- + luminescence.
bioluminescent (adj.): also bio-luminescent, 1929; see bioluminescence.
calumet (n.): 1660s, from Canadian French calumet, from Norman French calumet "pipe" (Old French chalemel, 12c., Modern French chalumeau), from Latin calamellus, diminutive of calamus "reed; something made of reed or shaped like a reed" (see shawm).
calumniate (v.): 1550s, from Latin calumniatus, past participle of calumniari "to accuse falsely," from calumnia "slander, false accusation" (see calumny). Related: Calumniated; calumniating.
calumniation (n.): 1540s, noun of action from calumniate (v.).
calumniator (n.): 1690s, from Latin calumniator, agent noun from calumniari (see calumniate (v.)).
calumnious (adj.): late 15c., from Latin calumniosus, from calumnia (see calumny). Related: Calumniously.
calumny (n.): "False & malicious misrepresentation of the words or actions of others, calculated to injure their reputation" [Fowler], mid-15c., from Middle French calomnie (15c.), from Latin calumnia "trickery, subterfuge, misrepresentation, malicious charge," from calvi "to trick, deceive," from PIE root *kel- (6) "to deceive, confuse" (cognates: Greek kelein "to bewitch, seduce, beguile," Gothic holon "to deceive," Old Norse hol "praise, flattery," Old English hol "slander," holian "to slander").
capitulum (n.): used in various senses in English; Latin, literally "little head," diminutive of caput "head," also "leader, guide, chief person; summit; capital city; origin, source, spring," figuratively "life, physical life;" in writing "a division, paragraph;" of money, "the principal sum," from PIE *kaput- "head" (see head (n.)).
cerebellum (n.): 1560s, from Latin cerebellum "a small brain," diminutive of cerebrum "brain" (see cerebral).
clitellum (n.): "raised band around an earthworm," 1816, Modern Latin, from Latin clitellae "a pack-saddle," diminutive of *clitra "litter," from PIE *klei-tro-, from root *klei- (see lean (v.)). Related: Clitellar.
clump (n.): 1580s, "lump; cluster of trees," from Middle English clompe "a lump" (c. 1300), from Dutch klomp "lump, mass," or Middle Low German klumpe "clog, wooden shoe." Old English had clympre "lump, mass of metal."
clump (v.2): "walk heavily," 1660s, imitative. Related: Clumped; clumping.
clump (v.1): "to heap or gather in clumps" (transitive), 1824, from clump (n.). Related: Clumped; clumping. Intransitive sense "to form a clump or clumps" is recorded from 1896.
clumperton (n.): "clown, clodhopper," 1530s, from clump (n.), probably on model of simpleton.
clumpy (adj.): 1820, from clump (n.) + -y (2). Also noted 1881 in an Isle of Wight glossary as a noun meaning "a stupid fellow." Related: Clumpily; clumpiness. Compare also clumperton "clown, clodhopper" (1530s).
clumsy (adj.): 1590s, "acting as if benumbed," alteration of Middle English clumsid "numb with cold" (14c.), past participle of clumsen "to benumb, stiffen or paralyze with cold or fear," from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse klumsa "make speechless, palsy; prevent from speaking," intensive of kluma "to make motionless." For insertion of -s-, see flimsy.

Not in general use until 18c., with senses "manifesting awkwardness; so made as to be unwieldy." Related: Clumsily; clumsiness. Compare Swedish dialectal klummsen "benumbed with cold," Norwegian klumsad (past participle) "speechless, palsied by a spasm or by fear or witchery;" German verklammen "grow stiff or numb with cold." Also compare clumse (n.) "a stupid fellow."
columbarium (n.): "subterranean sepulchre in ancient Roman places with niches for urns holding remains," neuter of Latin columbarius, "dove-cote" (so called from resemblance), literally "pertaining to doves;" from columba "dove." Literal sense of "dove-cote" is attested in English from 1881.
Columbia: poetic name for United States of America, earlier for the British colonies there, 1730s, also the nation's female personification, from name of Christopher Columbus (also see Colombia) with Latin "country" ending -ia. A popular name for places and institutions in the U.S. in the post-Revolutionary years, when former tributes to king and crown were out of fashion: such as Columbia University (New York, U.S.) founded in 1754 as King's College; re-named 1784. Also District of Columbia (1791, as Territory of Columbia); "Hail, Columbia" (Joseph Hopkinson, 1798), Barlow's "Columbiad" (1809).