5. Borium (Boron) - Elementymology & Elements Multidict

Elementymology & Elements Multidict

This site comprises 120 pages of text and photos, one for each element, and several pages for access. – For captions or explanatory texts move your mouse over illustrations, links etc.

5
Borium Boron
Boor – Bor – Boron – Boro – ホウ素 – Бор – 硼
B
Multilingual dictionary

Indo-European
Borium Latin

— Germanic
Boor Afrikaans
Bor Danish
Bor German
Boron English
Bor Faroese
Boar Frisian (West)
Bór Icelandic
Bor Luxembourgish
Boor Dutch
Bor Norwegian
Bor Swedish

— Italic
Boro Aragonese
Boru Aromanian
Boru Asturian
Bor Catalan
Boro Spanish
Boron French
Bôr Friulian
Boro Galician
Boro Italian
Bòor Lombard
Bòr Occitan
Boro Portuguese
Bor Romanian - Moldovan

— Slavic
Бор [Bor] Bulgarian
Bor Bosnian
Бор [bor] Belarusian
Bor Czech
Bor Croatian
Bòr Kashubian
Бор [Bor] Macedonian
Bor Polish
Бор [Bor] Russian
Bór Slovak
Bor Slovenian
Бор [Bor] Serbian
Бор [bor] Ukrainian

— Baltic
Boras Lithuanian
Bors Latvian
Buors Samogitian

— Celtic
Bor Breton
Boron Welsh
Bórón Gaelic (Irish)
Bòron Gaelic (Scottish)
Boron Gaelic (Manx)
Boron Cornish

— Other Indo-European
Βοριο [vorio] Greek
Բոր [bor] Armenian
Bor[i] Albanian

— Indo-Iranian/Iranian
Boron Kurdish
Бор [bor] Ossetian
Бор [Bor] Tajik

— Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan
বোরন [borana] Bengali
بور [bwr] Persian
બોરૉનનો [boronano] Gujarati
बोरॉन् [boron] Hindi

Finno-Ugric
Boor Estonian
Boori Finnish
Bór Hungarian
Бор [Bor] Komi
Бор [Bor] Mari
Бора [bora] Moksha
Buur Võro

Altaic
Bor Azerbaijani
Бор [Bor] Chuvash
Бор [bor] Kazakh
Бор [Bor] Kyrgyz
Бор [bor] Mongolian
Bor Turkish
بور [bor] Uyghur
Bor Uzbek

Other (Europe)
Boroa Basque
ბორი [bori] Georgian

Afro-Asiatic
بورون [būrūn] Arabic
בור [bor] Hebrew
Boron, ²Boru Maltese

Sino-Tibetan
Phìn (硼) Hakka
ホウ素 [houso] Japanese
붕소 [bungso] Korean
โบรอน [bōron] Thai
Bo Vietnamese
[peng2 / pang4] Chinese

Malayo-Polynesian
Boro Cebuano
Boron Indonesian
Pūtiwha Māori
Boron Malay

Other Asiatic
ബോറോണ്‍ [bōṟōṇam] Malayalam
போரோன் [pōrōn] Tamil

Africa
Bolo Lingala
Borone Sesotho
Boroni Swahili

North-America
Xacoiztatl Nahuatl

South-America
Boru Quechua

Creole
Borimi Sranan Tongo

Artificial
Borio Esperanto

New names
Boron Atomic Elements
Substeelium Dorseyville
memory peg

A brown amorphous powder, or a black crystalline form
melting point 2300 °C; 4172 °F
boiling point 2550 °C; 4622 °F
density 2.34-2.37 g/cc; 146.08-147.95 pounds/cubic foot
1808 Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac & Louis-Jacques Thénard, France / Sir Humphry Davy, England
Bauraq = borax (Arab)
named by Gay-Lussac and Thénard

History & Etymology

Boron compounds may have been known for about 6000 years, starting with the Babylonians. The Egyptians, Chinese, Tibetans and Arabians are reported to have used such materials. The Arabs used the expression Bauraq (Persian burah) for a number of minerals including the now familiar borax (Na2B4O7•10H2O).

In 1702, Wilhelm Homberg (1652-1715) used borax, a substance generally thought to be artificially produced, to make a snow white powder he called sedative salt, (boric acid, HBO2). In 1747-8 Théodore Baron de Hénouville (1715-1768) demonstrated that borax is composed of the sedative salt and soda (Na2O).

Gay-Lussac & Thénard in France and Davy in England isolated the element within sedative salt in 1808.

On 21 June 1808, Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) and Louis-Jacques Thénard (1777-1857) in France announced their decomposing and recomposing boric acid. They called the new element bore and concluded that the radical should have a place beside Carbon, Phosphorus, and Sulphur. The following year Gay-Lussac proposed that gases combine exclusively in simple volume ratios.

Nine days later in England, on 30 June 1808 Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) presented a paper to the Royal Society likewise announcing the discovery of metallic Boron by heating boric acid and Potassium in a Copper tube for 15 minutes. In the Bakerian lecture, read on 15 December 1808, Davy proposed to name the new substance Boracium (note):

Bore / boracium was in English named boron, because of the similarity to carbon. Most of the other languages use the name given by Gay-Lussac and Thénard.

Chemistianity 1873
AMYAN
BORON, combined, used in forming Art Gems,
Is a metalloid of dull greenish-brown hue,
When burnt in Air, it forms Boric Oxide.
Boron, red hot, will absorb Nitrogen,
And, at the same time, emit bright white light.
J. Carrington Sellars, Chemistianity, 1873, p. 41
Late nineteenth-century trade card for Borax Soap. American Antiquarian Society
Further reading
  • Bor. Gmelins Handbuch der anorganische Chemie, 8. Aufl.; System-Nummer 13 (1926).
  • Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 540-555.
  • James B. Calvert, "Boron" 2002 (on-line).


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