I’ve always heard that people want to make it match with other -ium elements like titanium. Now, can you give me the current price of platinium?
And as a corrolary of Occam’s razor: Webster didn’t make mistakes, he purpozly mesd with the langwidj.
Deal. I still automatically think about spelling it that way. Now we can get to the important things, like arguing over epinephrine vs. adrenaline (in the scientific sense). I think the former is winning now, take that, Anglo-Latin imperialists.
There’s the Steel Crown of Romania. It’s made of steel because it was forged from an Ottoman cannon captured during the War of Independence, not because steel was a precious metal.
That’s pretty badass.
Shouldn’t that be “sulphour”?
Well, it’s not like we disagree on whether a tomato is fruit or vegetable.
Only if it’s spelt ‘Sulfor’ in the USA - we’ve got some OUs where you have O, but not where you have U.
There was a set of aluminum tableware made for some young prince back when it was still rare.
It wasn’t “smelting” that was needed – electricity allowed them to produce large amounts of aluminum by electrolysis. The process – which was complicated by the need to find something to dissolve the aluminum mineral in – was discovered very nearly simultaneously by two independent workers.
I have seen a painting of Napoleon Bonaparte and his family, in which the baby has a rattle made of aluminum. The rattle still exists, in some museum somewhere.
I don’t think metallic aluminum was available while Napoleon was alive. Perhaps your confusing Bonaparte with one of the later Napoleons?
Sarcasm much?
I never realised til now that the word was spelled different in the US, I just thought it was a quirk of pronunciation.
Most of the other spelling crimes involve leaving out “U”'s and substituting ‘Z’ for ‘S’.
(Z by the way is pronounced “Zed” by the rest of the world, not “Zee”.)
One of the later Napoleons? Are we including the one who died at 22, or the one who died in battle in South Africa?
I was thinking of Napoleon II or Napoleon III, but there were a couple other members of the family that probably also had the means to have their kids own toys made of (then) exotic materials.
Napoleon’s aluminum baby rattle Alcoa -- Company
It’s been a while since I participated in a transatlantic pronunciation/spelling thread, but the Zee/Zed thing is often amusing (horror at the fact that ‘zed’ makes the last line of the alphabet song not rhyme; confusion over whether we call a stripey horse a ‘Zedbra’, etc)
I’ve always been amused that people who insist on using “aluminium” for the sake of consistency* nevertheless insuist on having the pronunciation of “Z” the Odd Man Outr with its eccentric ending, unlike the pronnciation of any other letter.
*Yet “platinum” doesn’t bother them.
Also mentioned on QI - it isn’t Eros, it’s Anteros - minus ten points 
Okay, a stupid joke.
How was aluminum discovered?
Someone smelt it.
you’ve got some brass posting a stupid joke like that.
Clearly it was comedy gold. Or not depending on your viewpoint.
Oh, the irony.