this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like the British guy who discovered it settled on the spelling without the extra i

A January 1811 summary of one of Davy's lectures at the Royal Society mentioned the name aluminium as a possibility. The next year, Davy published a chemistry textbook in which he used the spelling aluminum.

[–] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Kinda seems like there was a typo and it just stuck.

[–] psud@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

It was called aluminum for a long time universally. Everyone else changed to aluminium when it was discovered to be an element and was renamed to meet the naming scheme of the time

America kept the old word. I'm half surprised America doesn't call gold aurium

[–] odium@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you not think that textbook would have multiple places where they use that word?

[–] AtmaJnana@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is the word only ever written in the one textbook, then?

[–] odium@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Im saying that it's not a typo if the creator of a word spells it a certain way multiple times in a book. They clearly meant to spell it that way when they were writing the book.

[–] AtmaJnana@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

As i read it, in the commenter's scenario, it is the extra "i" that would be the typo.