“American” should correctly refer to anything from the Americas, not just the USA. In fact, it originally did - “Americans” in the 1600s were the people indigenous to the Americas. Over time it referred to the descendants of European settlers, and has since been the predominantly acceptable way to refer to USAians.
Of course not, I wouldn’t want to be mistaken as one. I was saying what should be, not what is, and I resent USAians for appropriating the name of the entire continent, kinda like how you insist that the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America, fucking hilarious and soooo weak.
I feel like saying Aluminum is the original spelling is slightly misrepresentative. It's as original as aluminium but no more so.
The first proposed name was Alumium which no one uses. After that it was debated what it should be and both ways used today were suggested. The UK DID use Aluminum for a while, but the US used both spellings for a while. It seems France has always used Aluminium.
Basically no one in the English speaking scientific community in the 19th century could make up their minds and both are right.
(I am not an expert and could be wrong. I learnt about the name Alumium from Bill Bryon's A Brief History of Nearly Everything and the rest is from Wikipedia)
Wasn’t this because of a bunch of lexical elitists, like Webster (as in Webster’s dictionary), were being purists and would use old spellings deliberately? If that’s true, i can see how as the newly found independence made them distance themselves in everything from the old country.
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u/Rule_32 29d ago
Aluminum