Arsenic triselenide
3 February 2023
Arsenic, element 33, chemical symbol As, has been known since antiquity. The English word is a borrowing from both the Anglo-Norman arsenik, which is attested in the mid thirteenth century, and directly from the Lain arsenicum. The Latin is, in turn, a borrowing from the ancient Greek ἀρσενικόν (arsenicon). The Greek probably comes from an unattested Middle Iranian word. The present-day Farsi word for the element is زرنى (zarni). Zarnik is the Syriac and Aramaic word for the element, and these languages are probably the route the word took from Middle Iranian into Greek and other European languages.
Arsenic appears in English by the end of the fourteenth century, and it appears in works of Gower, Chaucer, and Trevisa in the 1390s. Gower’s Confessio Amantis has this:
Of the Planetes ben begonne:
The gold is titled to the Sonne,
The mone of Selver hath his part,
And Iren that stant upon Mart,
The Led after Saturne groweth,
And Jupiter the Bras bestoweth,
The Coper set is to Venus,
And to his part Mercurius
Hath the quikselver, as it falleth,
The which, after the bok it calleth,
Is ferst of thilke fowre named
Of Spiritz, whiche ben proclamed;
And the spirit which is secounde
In Sal Armoniak is founde:
The thridde spirit Sulphur is:
The ferthe suiende after this
Arcennicum be name is hote.(The planets are created from:
Gold is attributed to the sun;
The moon has, for his part, silver;
And it is iron that stands upon Mars;
And lead grows after Saturn;
And Jupiter bestows brass;
Copper is set to Venus;
And for his part Mercury
Has the quicksilver as it falls,
Which the book calls,
The first of these four named
Spirits, which are proclaimed;
And the spirit which is second
Is found in sal ammoniac [ammonium chloride];
The third spirit is sulfur;
The fourth follows after this,
Arsenic is called by name.)
Chaucer’s The Canon Yeoman’s Tale includes this passage:
Ther is also ful many another thyng
That is unto oure craft apertenyng.
Though I by ordre hem nat reherce kan,
By cause that I am a lewed man,
Yet wol I telle hem as they come to mynde,
Thogh I ne kan nat sette hem in hir kynde:
As boole armonyak, verdegrees, boras,
And sondry vessels maad of erthe and glas,
Oure urynales and oure descensories,
Violes, crosletz, and sublymatories,
Cucurbites and alambikes eek,
And othere swiche, deere ynough a leek --
Nat nedeth it for to reherce hem alle --
Watres rubifiyng, and boles galle,
Arsenyk, sal armonyak, and brymstoon;
And herbes koude I telle eek many oon,
As egremoyne, valerian, and lunarie,
And othere swiche, if that me liste tarie;
Oure lampes brennyng bothe nyght and day,
To brynge aboute oure purpos, if we may(There is also many another thing
That is pertaining unto our craft.
Though I cannot list them in order,
Because I am an unlearned man.
Yet I will name them as they come to mind,
Though I cannot place them in their categories:
Such as armenian bol [red clay], verdigris [copper acetate], borax,
And various vessels made of earth and glass,
Our urinals and our retorts,
Vials, crucibles, and sublimation vessels,
Vessels for distilling and beakers too,
And other such, dear enough for a leek—
There is no need to list them all—
Rubifying waters, and bull’s gall,
Arsenic, sal ammoniac [ammonium chloride], and brimstone;
Of herbs I could tell many a one, as well,
Such as agrimony, valerian, and moonwort,
And other such, if I wanted to tarry.)
And John Trevisa’s translation of of Bartholomæus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (On the Properties of Things) contains the following passage about the element:
De arsenico. Capitulum XXX.
Arsenicum hatte auripigmentum for þe colour of gold, and is ygadered in Pontus among goldene matiere. Þat is most pure þat passeþ into goldene colour, and þilke þat haþ smale veynes is most pale and acounted wors.
(About arsenic. Chapter 30.
Arsenic is called auripigmentum because of its gold color and is mined in Pontus alongside other golden minerals. That which is most pure passes into a golden color, that which has small veins is most pale and accounted worse.)
Both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary include this passage in their citations, although it seems to me that Trevisa is using the Latin word. The -um endings of arsenicum and auripigmentum are unchanged from Bartholomæus’s original. And M.C. Seymour’s 1975 edition of Trevisa’s translation italicizes the words, as it does other Latin terms. Both dictionaries cite Seymour’s edition but omit the italicization in their citations. But, as the passages from Gower and Chaucer show, the word was clearly established in English by this point.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. arsenic, n.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canon Yeoman’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, lines 784–801. Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. San Marino, Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9.
Gower, John. Confessio Amantis. In G.C. Macaulay, ed. The English Works of John Gower, vol. 1 of 2. Early English Text Society, ES 81. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1900, 367–68, lines 4.2467–83. HathiTrust Digital Library. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 3.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. arsenik, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2018, s.v. arsenic, n.
Trevisa, John. On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomæus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, vol. 2 of 3. Michael Charles Seymour, ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, 19.30, 1294. London, British Library MS Additional 27944.
Image credit: Materialscientist, 2019. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.