S and K Words--Third Essay

If there is one thing that the study of words should do, above all, it is to make us humble. Why? Because sooner or later words take us into almost every area of study known to humans, and you are confronted with the task of trying to explain, in a few words, difficult concepts captured by the interesting word. The task stretches us conceptually, linguistically, intellectually. It shows our educational "gaps." This is all a prelude to introducing some of the words beginning with "s" and "k" that still remain: stacte, siphuncle, synchrotron, klystron, kinin, khellin, kyestein, krimmer. Let's try to begin with the more accessible terms of this list.

1. Krimmer comes from Krim/Krym, the Russian word for the Crimean region. Krimmer, then, is a "grey or black fur made from the wool of young lambs in or near the Crimea; or an imitation of this." Here is a page showing these fabrics, which you can purchase for a reasonable rate. I think the next great technological advance has to be an ability to create something online that you can feel. You don't know it until you feel it and wrap it around you, even though it looks as soft and inviting as the most alluring blankie you can imagine. The OED compares it to astrakahan or karakul. The latter, for example, is a name of a province and lake in Bokhara, where the breed of sheep with coarse wiry fur originated, from which we get the name. If I wander into a fabric store some day and begin rubbing things on my face, I hope people will understand...

2. Behind the word siphuncle, the Greek word for "tube" or "pipe," we see siphon. To get to siphuncles, we must reluctantly leave the world of Russian sheep and their wool, and move to the world of chambered mollusks, sometimes known as tetrabranchiate cephalopods. The most familiar to us is the multi-chamberd Nautilus shell, pictured here. These shells have fascinated mathematicians for ages because of their "logarithmic spiral" which approximates a Fibonacci Series. Here is a picture showing the actual siphuncle, a longitudinal or transverse tube of the empty shells of a cephalopod, connecting the empty shells. Well, a little terminology. Each of the empty chambers is called a camera, and these are separated by a partition--the septum (pl. septa). The animal lives in the last-formed and largest of these camerae. It has two pairs of breathing organs/gills, hence the name Tetrabranchiate. The siphuncle is the tube (only portions of which are seen in the picture) which runs the entire length of the camerae of the mollusk. The siphuncle is filled with gas secreted by the animal, which enables it to move. I bet a humorist could pick up on the "uncle" part of the word and make a joke or two..

3. Well, let's move from the world of biology to particle physics. Just as everything in life seems to be moving faster, so physics has developed an instrument, called the klystron, which accelerates electrons for some medical purposes. Derived from the Greek word klyzein, which means "to wash over" or "break over in waves," a klystron is vaccum tube used for generating microwave signals. As this article says, it was invented in 1937 by Russell and Sigurd Varian. They emptied the air from a tubular glass structure, sent high velocity electrons vibrating in the tube, which led to the tube's emitting a high frequency microwave energy that can be detected by a radar receiver. During WWII radar systems using klystron technology were used by the Axis powers, while the Allies relied on another technology (I bet there is a story here..). In any case, after WWII the Varian brothers continued their work into microwave and radar energy, but now devoted to medical uses. Varian Medical Systems was invented to commercialize the technology--used on cancer and other maladies. Now Varian employs more than 4,000 people and is based down the road from where I spent many good years of my life (Palo Alto).

4. While on klystron, we might as well attack synchrotron. We are in the world of particle accelerators with this term, and the device is a long, spiraling one in which the magnetic field (to turn the particles so they circulate) and the electric field (to accelerate the particles) are synchronized (hence the name) with the travelling particle beam. Here is an article, with picture. Here is an article on, with picture of, the Australian Synchrotron. It defines it as follows: "a large machine (about the size of a football field) that accelerates electrons to almost the speed of light. As the electrons are deflected through magnetic fields they create extremely bright light." I would never have known it, but the following is a partial list some of the applications:

"biosciences (protein crystallography and cell biology); medical research (microbiology, disease mechanisms, high resolution imaging and cancer radiation therapy); environmental sciences (toxicology, atmospheric research, clean combustion and cleaner industrial production technologies); agriculture (plant genomics, soil studies, animal and plant imaging).

Whereas the klystron was first invented in the 1930s, the first use of the term synchrotron comes from 1945: "The synchrotron... a proposed high energy particle accelerator..." So, one could easily spend one's life on shearing sheep for production of krimmer, on studying siphuncles in mollusks, in learning about synchrotrons and their applications; in plumbing the depths of the klystron. And, there is more...

5. Kyestein has had a rocky history. Well, it actually, as the name indicates, is some kind of rock or pebble. The word is loosely derived from the Greek kuesis (meaning conception or pregnancy) and the German stein (stone). M. Nauche, in the early 1830s, decided that this whitish substance occasionally found as a cloud in or pellicle upon urine was diagnostic of pregnancy. Well, there was a flurry of studies following in the 1840s-1880s to determine if, in fact, this correlation existed. By the mid 1850s, however, kyestein was determined not to be peculiar to pregnancy, but may occur "whenever the lacteal elements are secreted without a free discharge from the mammae." By the 1890s the following seemed was the scientific consensus:

"Kyestein, sometimes present in pregnant women, is a protein substance, consisting of triple phosphates, fungi, and infusoria, that form like a flocculent cloud in the urine kept standing for a few days at a temperature of 70 degrees F. It occurs in the urine from the eighth to the thirty-second week of pregnancy, then disappears. It has practically no diagnostic value, as it is found in the urine of non-prenant women, and at times that of men."

So, since it had faded as a diagnostic sign, the word tended also to fade away, though its presence bears witness to the error promulgated at its origin. There must be a book (or maybe even a whole library) someplace about erroneous guesses in medicine. The story of kyestein would constitute a small chapter in such a book.

Out of space, still with kinin and khellin to go. But I think I will incorporate them in an essay of non-scientific words...

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