Friday

69. Cobalt/Kobold

My friend Kyle was just telling me something he learned in class the other day.

The word cobalt comes from the German word for evil spirit or goblin. This word was kobold.



Kobold apparently tricked miners by placing fake silver in mines that was much less valuable, and it even made the miners sick. This fake silver was then called cobalt, after Kobold. The sickness was most likely caused by the arsenic and sulphur it was found with.

Kobolds appear in several of the nerdy pastimes I partake in, such as World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. They apparently appear in a lot of German folklore and many like to live in mines and mess with the miners. This led to the story of kobold tricking the miners with poisoned fake silver, and now we have the word cobalt.

Sources:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=cobalt
http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/co.html

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