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Steve Taylore-Knowles

July 20, 2015 10:00

Word Stories: cobalt

Steve Taylore-Knowles looks at the stories behind the English language.

Miners are, or used to be at least, a superstitious lot. Understandable, I suppose, in men who worked deep underground in dangerous conditions in the days before widespread health and safety regulations. Being afraid might just stop you wandering off on your own, although the warning aspect of some superstitions isn’t immediately obvious. Miners in the north-east of England, for example, believed that it was bad luck to meet a pig on the way to work. (I also believe this, since I work from home and meeting a pig on my commute from bedroom to office would certainly mean that my day had started off on the wrong foot.)

They also believed that the deep chambers of mines were occupied by various demons and spirits. These spirits may be helpful and tap on the mine wall to lead the miner to a fresh vein of whatever he’s digging for, or they may lead him to his doom. In genera, it was thought best to stay on the right side of these spirits by always leaving crumbs of food for them in the mines. These spirits had various names in different regions: bogles, trolls, knockers, etc. Miners in Germany frightened each other with stories of kobolds (or kobolts). The etymology of kobold isn’t certain, but it may derive from the Middle High German words kobe (house, hut) and holt (goblin), derived from hold (gracious, friendly). It may also come from kobe plus walt (from walten, to rule). The English work goblin, by the way, seems to be ultimately derived from the ancient Greek, κόβαλος (rogue) and the wicked spirits invoked by rogues, the κόβαλοι.

Silver miners in medieval Saxony were familiar with a seemingly worthless mineral that spoiled batches of ore. It also affected their health because it was combined with arsenic and sulphur. They gave it the name kobold, after the mischievous mine spirits. When a new metal was finally extracted from the mineral around 1733 by the Swedish mineralogist Georg Brandt, he gave it the name the miners had used, which is now in modern English cobalt.

Тема: Grammar & Vocabulary       Теги: Wordstory, Etymology

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