You walk on a rug and then touch metal. You get an electric shock. We know what that is now.
What was that phenomena thought of, and called, prior to the understanding of electricity ?
Not all rugs cause static build-up. Natural fibres are generally “safe”. Basically the causes of most if not all static shocks we experience are materials younger than the discovery of electricity.
Well, for the really big shocks, like lightning, they might have used terms like “the fist of God” and “smiting”.
plenty of natural materials will create static.
Hardly. “Electricity” is derived from “electrum”, the Greek word for amber. Rub fur and amber together and you can get quite a nice shock. IIRC the modern word dates to early Enlightenment science, but I can’t say anything about historical observations understanding of electric phenomenon before then.
Study of the static electrical phenomena produced by rubbing amber are thought to go back (at least) to the very first Ancient Greek philosopher, Thales, in about 500 B.C., so these phenomena have been associated with words having the “electr…” root at least since then.
The OP seems to think that the concept of electricity emerged only in fairly recent history. This is not the case, although it is true that our theoretical understanding of electricity has increased enormously over the last three centuries or so. The modern study of electricity largely goes back to the work of Francis Hauksbee (1660–1713), a protegé of Isaac Newton, who built machines capable of producing considerable static charges (and making large sparks and delivering strong shocks). He did not invent the term “electric”, however. As noted, in effect this goes back at least to Thales.
See Leyden Jar for some more interesting historical tidbits.
I meant the modern understanding of electricity. According to the Wikipedia article on the etymology of electricity the phenomenon originally described was how (what we now know are) charged objects attract small and light materials. Static charge was what was called electricity and it was known and a scientific curiosity way back, but static shocks of the magnitude and frequency everyone experience them in the modern world are due to our use of synthetic materials, so your average person may not have experienced one his or her whole life.
My wag:
- after the coining of the word electric, scientists called static shocks “electrical shocks” or something similar
- before that, anyone encountering it called it a sting, or shock or whatever.
Well you are mistaken. It is certainly possible to get a shock and a spark from natural materials such as amber and wool (heck, you can get a shock from stroking a cat). Hauksbee could produce large charges, and large shocks using glass and wool. It was recognized that the ability of electrically charged materials to attract bits of chaff and their ability to produce shocks and sparks were closely related. It is fairly obvious, and, as I pointed out in my post, these phenomena have been associated with words having the “electr…” root since about 500B.C.
lazybratsche is wrong on one point, however. The ancient Greek word for amber was not “electrum” (which actually means an alloy of gold and silver", but ἠλεκτρίς, which transliterates into our alphabet as “electris”, even closer to our modern English word “electricity” (which, of course, directly derives from it).
It did not take a “modern understanding of electricity” to know that electric shocks were electric shocks, and to call them that. Neither does it requite modern materials to produce quite large electric shocks.
So it follows that all animals used to be bald?
My mistake. There are plenty of situations where you can build up a static charge without synthetic materials.
A superficial search uncovers no source however, that njtt’s statement that electric phenomena were associated with electr… words all the way back to Thales is correct. According to Wikipedia Thales considered the phenomenon of rubbed amber attracting things to be a magnetic phenomenon. And the etymologies I find make no mention of previous uses other than for the material amber, before Gilbert coins “electricus” to describe the attractive property of amber. So unless njtt just meant that such phenomena were associated with amber, and the word for amber in some languages starts with electr…, I’d like to see a source for earlier terms.
But this derail I’ve caused brings us no closer to answering the actual question in the OP. What did people in general call static shocks before science started calling them electric?
Sparks. Lightning. A jolt. You don’t need to understand what’s caused the shock to know that it’s happened, you don’t need to know that the spark is electrical to see it’s a spark.
I agree. But other sparks and jolts are explicable to common sense, while static charge is pretty strange. I should think The Straight Dope could be more specific than this, even if it’s extremely likely.
That would require language conform to the same standard … if language isn’t up to this high standard, how can anyone else be held to blame for that ?
Long before any knowledge of electricity existed people were aware of shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BC referred to these fish as the “Thunderer of the Nile”, and described them as the “protectors” of all other fish.
The arabs also call it the thunder fish.
So they called the results of the electric eel discharge as lightning… but didn’t understand it very well.
Thales said the effect of rubbing amber was magnetism (lodestone being magnetic too…he compared amber to lodestone and found it to be the same effect )
Its the english Gilbert in 1600 that calls the static electricity from amber “electricus” (“of amber” in greek/latin …)
I’m not sure what you mean here. I was thinking one of the early writers on such phenomena would have described the possible sparks/jolts/shocks and not just the attraction of straw that the superficial second hand sources I’m finding online quote. That would say something about the words used. Someone could even have compared the experiments that made for the most interesting lab work to everyday experiences of people and mentioned the terms they used.
If I didn’t have to prioritize getting my apartment ready for sale, I’d go search for first hand sources myself, but I’d be limited to what’s available online in any case.
Static Shock only premiered in 2000. Electricity was well understood by then.
NM
Should have finished reading thread before posting.
Thales did not clearly distinguish between electrical phenomena associate with amber and magnetic ones associated with lodestone, but that is really quite beside the point. The point is that electrical phenomena have been associated with amber, known as electris, at least since his time.
I do not understand what question you think has not been answered. Of course people ignorant of the science of their time do not call things by their scientific name, and may not have any particular name at all for them. That is true now just as much as it was in the ancient world. When my daughter was a toddler and first got a static shock she called it a sting. So what? She might have called it an ouchie, or something else. An uneducated person in ancient times, ignorant of learned investigations into electrical phenomena, would no doubt have done something similar, i.e., on the spur of the moment pressed some other word associated with sudden pain into service. None of that is very interesting, and there is not likely to have been much consistency about it. What is worth asking is what was the name of the phenomenon if you knew the the proper name, what the “experts” call it. That has been “electr…” something since about 500B.C. (if not before).
And, for God’s sake, not being able to find a certain fact in Wikipedia is NOT any sort of evidence that it is not so! :eek: :proper rolleyes:
Interesting to you or not, it’s the question the OP asked. I’m perfectly willing to accept that pre 17th century ordinary people didn’t have a consistent name other than shock or jolt, after all, that was my initial presumption. But since that presumption was based on what I’m being told is the flawed assumption that those ordinary people would only rarely experience that phenomenon, I’m curious as to whether at least some people experienced it often enough to have a particular name for it. If no one else is as curious and has sources to explore, the thread will just die, unless of course someone wants to continue the meta-discussion on whether or not the question is objectively interesting.
I didn’t claim it as evidence it wasn’t so, I just stated that my admittedly shallow search hadn’t uncovered any, and expressed the desire for some.
I don’t know why you chose ridicule rather than just supplying the supporting evidence, but I’m fairly sure you’re not of the opinion that I should ignore how the dictionaries say electricus, as an adjective describing the electric nature of amber and other electric (old definition) substances, was coined in 1600 based on Latin electrum, from Greek elektron (Merriam-Websters), and adopt “the proper name’s been electr… something since Thales, and the word electricity comes directly from the Greek electris” based only on you having written so twice in this thread.
Feel free to roll your eyes again at how I’m only familiar with the incomplete and erroneous dictionaries available to me directly, or cited by wikipedia, but see if you can’t find it in your heart to then fight my ignorance with some other cites.