if only he'd gotten started sooner

[swan_tower]

Dang it. Joseph Priestley has robbed me of my chance to use the word "dephlogisticated" in this book.

(The term, and the substance it was coined to describe, didn't come on the scientific scene until his experiments in the mid-1770s. So I can't talk about dephlogisticated air -- aka oxygen -- because nobody knows about it yet.)

Pity. It's such a fun word.

Comments

[kendokamel.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I shall have to use it in conversation, tomorrow. (;

[onyxhawke.livejournal.com]

I believe James Enge beat both of you too it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I doubt he beat Joseph Priestley to it, unless Enge was around in the eighteenth century . . . .