[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: tarngeb

[Will Martin]

I’m teased by the “long ‘o’” suggested by {gho-nI’}, wondering if that could be a sound, or if there were some symbolic issues relating to an oval (a long circle).

The special stuff about Tungsten is that it’s about as heavy as gold (and so is sometimes used in jewelry with gold coating to fake being pure gold) and it has the highest melting and vaporizing temperature of any metal. It was used in the filaments of incandescent lightbulbs, and is used for ballast in race cars and other settings where lead just isn’t dense enough to pack enough weight into a small volume. It apparently works great for armor piercing ammunition.

So what does that have to do with long ohs or long circles? And what does it have to do with tar, rat, or poison?

I’m definitely not getting any traction here, though the clues are too obvious, even as their references are mysterious.

The other name for it is Wolfram, hence the chemical symbol “W”, which is also the name of a scientific search engine. If you use the app “WolframAlpha” on an iPhone to look up “tungsten”, it pulls up an image of a spiraling filament with its ends hooked form a circle.

No traction.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Feb 3, 2021, at 12:26 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
> D'oh!!  I should have remembered pitchblende, as {tar} should have suggested "pitch".  Linguistic puns are usually the way to go.
> 
> Have you figured out the pun behind {targhonI'} "tungsten" {tar + gho + nI'} ?  Searching "tungsten + poison/toxic" brings up mixed results:
> 
> "Because tungsten is a rare metal and its compounds are generally inert, the effects of tungsten on the environment are limited.  [....]  It was at first believed to be relatively inert and an only slightly toxic metal, but beginning in the year 2000, the risk presented by tungsten alloys, its dusts and particulates to induce cancer and several other adverse effects in animals as well as humans has been highlighted from in vitro and in vivo experiments."  < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten >
> 
> ... so this approach is probably not productive.
> 
> -- Voragh
> 
> -----------------------------------Original Message-----------------------------------
> From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> On Behalf Of Alan Anderson
> 
> Tar is a substance that, when distilled, leaves a concentrated residue called pitch.
> 
> The German word “blenden” means “deceptive”, giving a name to the mineral “Blende” or “deceptive galena” (it looks like it has lead in it, but it doesn’t). Another name for Blende is sphalerite. Greek “sphaleros” also means “deceptive”.
> 
> Pitchblende is uranium ore.
> 
> -- ghunchu'wI'
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