The first description of a pencil, consisting of graphite inserted into a reed, or of graphite covered, like modern pencils, with two wooden plates forming a tube, refers to the 16th century, judging by the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (1885).
In a number of Slavic languages, the name of the pencil has been preserved, which it received at a time when pencils were made not from graphite, but from lead and were lead sticks: ołówek (Polish), olovka (Serbian), olivets (Ukrainian). The same is observed in other languages: Modern Greek (molibi), German (Bleistift), Turkish (kurşunkalem). In Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, the name of the pencil is related in meaning to the concept of "stone": lápiz, lápis. In a number of languages, due to historical conditions, there are several names for a pencil: lapes, moliv, kalem (in Albanian), kalem, moliv (in Bulgarian), alovak, pencil (in Belarusian).
In Russian, as well as in Turkic (and some other) languages, a stick with a graphite core for writing, drawing or drawing is called a pencil (Azerbaijani, Kalmyk, Kyrgyz, Lezgin, Tajik, Tatar, Tuvan, Udmurt, Khakass, etc.).
In the second half of the last century, academician J. Grot tried to give the etymology of this word.
Pencil (Turk., Kara - black, tash - stone).
This etymology was repeated in his "Experience" by N. V. Goryaev.
Pencil-b, -ik, Turkish. karatas.
In the second edition of this book we read:
Pencil-b, ik; Turkic kara-tash (tash, dash - stone).
However, in Turkish, the word karataş (“black stone”) is not a writing tool, but the mineral aspid, which is used to make slate boards.
The dictionary of A. G. Preobrazhensky says: “From the Turks. karatash: black kara, tash, dash slate. M. Fasmer: Pencil. From Turkic. "black stone", tour. karataş "black slate".
This etymology is repeated in CES:
Pencil. Loans. in the 18th century from Turkic. Turkic. pencil is formed by joining two words: kara - “black” and dash - “stone, slate”.
This Grotian etymology is given not only by etymological and explanatory dictionaries, but also by individual authors.
It could be said that such an etymology, proposed more than a hundred years ago, has withstood the test of time and become generally accepted. However, this is hampered by two circumstances that have not been paid attention until recently.
Firstly, the names given by various peoples to the subject of a pencil contain such concepts as “stone” (lapez, lapis, lapes), “lead” (ołówek, tin, olive, alovak, Bleistift, kurşunkalem, moliv, moliv, plombagina ), “reed” (kalem, kalem). But in none of the languages in the name of the pencil is there the concept of “black”. Secondly, none of the etymologists indicates the origin of the sound n, which is between kara (“black”) and dash (“stone”).
Only 40 years ago, in an article by the famous Turkologist Professor N.K. Dmitriev “On the Turkic elements of the Russian dictionary”, the word pencil was singled out as “Turkisms requiring additional documentation”. The author pointed out that “..., from the phonetic side, it is difficult to explain the sound n in the middle of a word.” This circumstance forced researchers to turn to the search for a different etymology of the word.
In ancient Greece, as in ancient Rome, sharply sharpened cane sticks were used for writing, which the Greeks called kalamos, and the Romans called kalamus. Writing with reed sticks spread throughout the East. Along with reed sticks, their name also spread.
Currently, the word calamus, being the name of a reed, writing pen, pen, pencil, exists in one or another phonetic form in a number of languages: in Azerbaijani (gelem - “pen”, “pen”, “reed”), Bulgarian (kalem - “pencil”, “pen”, “cane”, “pipe”), Georgian (kalami - “pen”), Kyrgyz (kalam - “pen”), Tatar (kalem - “feather”), Turkish (kalem - “feather ”).
When, instead of lead rods, rods made of the mineral graphite were inserted into reed tubes (so that hands would not get dirty and the rods would not break when writing), a new, complex word *kalamdaş (kalam - reed, daş - stone) appeared, which in the form of karan-dash entered into Russian.
Now it remains for the etymologist to prove that the pencil is the word *kalamdaş that has changed its phonetic appearance. Are there any words in the vocabulary of the Russian language in which the change of m to n and l to r occurred?
The phenomenon of the exchange of m on n in Russian is not unusual: it is observed in such words as doMkrat - doNkrat, pearls - zhenchug, ginger - inbir, camphor - kanfora. Hence *kalamdaş > *kalandaş. As for replacing the sound l with the sound p in Russian, it also does not seem impossible: a Muslim is a BasuRmanin, mumLit - mumRit, obmishuLit - obmishRit, Therefore, *kalamdaş> karandaş.
The examples show that the first component of the composite pencil has nothing to do with kara - “black”, it is a phonetically modified form of the word kalam - “reed”, which explains the presence of sound in the word in question.
Of the Turkic-speaking peoples, the Azerbaijanis retained the original form *kalamdaş - gelem-dash, which until recently was used on a par with the pencil form borrowed from the Russian language, but was supplanted by the latter, as noted in the "Azerbaijani-Russian Dictionary" of 1941.
The etymology of the word pencil, considered for a long time, has become erroneous. Now the dictionary entry dedicated to this word in the etymological dictionary may look like this:
A pencil is a thin stick of graphite embedded in a wooden shell and used for writing, drawing and drawing. It goes back to the Turkic *kalamdaş - "reed-stone" (reed tube with a graphite rod inserted into it). Wed Azeri gelemdash (gelem - "pen", "pen", "reed", dash - "stone") - a pencil. When borrowed in Turkic dialects, the word *kalamdaş underwent phonetic changes: in it the sound m changed into n, and l into r (as in the words kanfora vm. camphor, basurmanin vm. Muslim).
The given etymology, set out in the article “On the etymology of the word pencil”, is also proposed by the Hungarian Turkologist J. Nemeth. The article was later published in German in Acta linguistica, Academiae Scientiorum Hungarice under the title Das Russische Wort pencil Bleistift.
Any new etymology of any word can be either true or hypothetical. As soon as one of the hypothetical etymologies becomes indisputable, all other etymologies of the same word, no matter how many, are recognized as erroneous.
Some linguists feel that subsequent etymological dictionaries should not provide an etymology that has been proven wrong. There is also another point of view. R. A. Acharyan, for example, writes: “The mention of erroneous etymologies, along with the correct ones, reflects the history of the development of science. It is a picture or a mirror of all the research that many authors have made to reach the truth: erroneous etymologies reinforce the merits of a correct etymology.
Vvedenskaya L. A., Kolesnikov N. P. - Etymology - St. Petersburg, 2004
Every day we use many simple things that make our life more convenient and comfortable. They are familiar to us since childhood and we rarely think about the history of their appearance. For example, how and when did the first pencil appear, which today can be found in every home and in every school bag. Meanwhile, its appearance was preceded by a difficult and interesting history of the invention. It began in those ancient times, when a person had the first need for a written expression of the images he saw and his own thoughts.
It can be considered the prototype of the modern pencil, the beginning of its history. It was a thinly elongated rod made of lead or other metal. In fact, he did not write, but simply scratched on a softer surface. In ancient Egypt, papyrus was used for this.
Despite its primitiveness, the stylus was in use until the early Middle Ages and even reached Rus', where soft wax tablets or more accessible birch bark were used instead of papyrus. At the same time, the lead stylus still left, albeit a very weak, mark on the surface. To erase it, they used a bread crumb.
A later invention in the history of the pencil were silver sticks (sometimes lead-zinc), shaped like a piece of metal wire. For ease of use, they were soldered to a special handle and stored in a special case. The gray strokes applied by them, inscriptions and drawings could no longer be erased, and over time they acquired a pronounced brown tint. The device was called the “silver pencil” and was used in the 13th century by such famous masters of artistic graphics as Albrecht Dürer and Botticelli.
A century later, in the 14th century, the silver was replaced by a pencil, which was called Italian. For the manufacture of its core, at first black shale was used, and then burnt bones, which were ground into a fine powder and fastened with glue of vegetable origin, including vegetable oil. It is from here that the very name “pencil” presumably came from - the origin of the word is associated with the Turkic term karatas (karadas), meaning literally “black slate or stone” in translation. The history of its application is not over to this day, although the composition of the materials used for the rod has become more complicated. Modern artists use them when they want to achieve a certain effect.
Along with the use of hard materials for writing and drawing, a search began for compositions for self-hardening mixtures with the ability to leave a mark on the surface. The famous "Parisian pencil" was a mixture of white clay and ordinary black soot. Leaving a clear mark, he no longer scratched the paper. A tool of this type is also still used in art graphics. Another recipe was obtained in the 15th century and was a mixture of chalk, coloring pigments and binding fats. As pigments, no longer black, but colored components were used. So the first pastel was obtained. One of the discoveries in this area belongs to Leonardo da Vinci, who managed to get "red chalk" based on the use of iron oxides.
In the 16th century, natural deposits of a hitherto unknown black mineral were discovered in the vicinity of Cumberland. It was found by chance by local shepherds, who at first decided that it was ordinary coal, however, the mineral turned out to be non-flammable. With its metallic luster, it resembled lead, however, and this assumption was not confirmed - the mineral was lighter and completely non-fusible. But he had a remarkable property to leave a clear mark on almost any surface, and the shepherds came up with his first application - they began to mark sheep. The pointed end of the black mineral could be perfectly drawn, however, the matter was greatly complicated by its high fragility. At the slightest pressure, the pointed stick crumbled. In addition, the hands were very dirty.
The origin of the word "graphite" is associated with the name of the German Abraham Werner, who named it so by analogy with the Greek "grapho" (I write).
After the discovery of graphite, the mineral went on free sale, since its deposits turned out to be significant. It was bought mainly by artists and people related to drawing professions. To give the material strength and protect hands, a graphite stick was inserted between two wooden planks and tightly screwed with threads or strips of leather. The first brief descriptions of pencils with graphite stems date back to 1565. It was a treatise on minerals by Konrad Gesner. A little later, documents mention pencils set in wood.
The first enterprise in history for mass production of pencils was opened in Germany in Stein (1719). The rod was produced by mixing crushed graphite, sulfur and glue. It must be said that both the quality and the price of the resulting product were very low. 42 years have passed, and the German production was significantly improved by the carpenter Kaspar Faber, who later headed the Faber-Castell corporation, well known to our contemporaries.
The history of the appearance of the pencil is closely connected with the history of graphite. It proved to be useful not only for use in drawing and writing. Soon the British began to successfully apply the properties of this mineral in military affairs, and supplies from Cumberland to other European countries, in particular, to Germany, decreased. As a result, graphite has skyrocketed in price. Deposits of the mineral were subsequently discovered in many other places and countries, however, its scope also grew, especially with the discovery of its diamagnetic properties and applications in the electrical and nuclear industries. This forced us to look for ways to solve the problem, and today people have learned to synthesize an artificial analogue, which is widely used in the production of pencils.
A great contribution to the history of the development of the pencil was made by the inventor Nicolas Jacques Conte, a Frenchman by birth and a painter by vocation. His own recipe for the production of rods was developed in 1794 and made it possible to obtain a product of the highest quality. The composition included clay, soot, crushed graphite, starch and water. Having received rods of high strength, the inventor realized that this parameter can be changed at will due to the percentage of inclusion of clay and graphite itself. The more clay was added, the harder and stronger the rod became. The higher the percentage of graphite powder, the softer the pencil, and the darker the trace from it. This was a discovery of modern significance. It was it that formed the basis of the softness classification "M", "TM" and "T".
Markings (in construction and manufacturing), as well as for cosmetic and other similar purposes. Often, for convenience, the writing core of a pencil is inserted into a special frame.
Pencils are usually divided into simple and colored. A simple pencil has a graphite lead and writes in gray with shades from light to almost black (depending on the hardness of the graphite).
The frame of the stylus can be wooden, plastic, paper, rope. These pencils are considered disposable. Sometimes an eraser in a clip is fixed on the back end of the pencil.
A new disposable pencil with a wooden or plastic lead frame often needs to be sharpened (sharpened) before first use. During use, the lead wears out or breaks, and re-sharpening is required to continue working. A sharpener for pencils is specially designed for this. A pencil with a wooden and plastic lead frame can have a round, hexagonal, triangular (with rounded corners) section. Construction pencils have an oval or rectangular section with beveled corners and a flat lead.
In addition to disposable pencils, there are reusable mechanical pencils with replaceable leads held by a collet or other clamp.
Pencils differ in lead hardness, which, as a rule, is indicated on the pencil and is indicated by the letters M (or B - from the English blackness (lit. blackness) - soft and T (or H - from the English hardness (hardness) - hard. Standard (hard-soft) pencil is indicated by combinations of TM or HB. The letter F (from the English fine point (thinness) is the average tone between HB and H. It should also be noted that the tone of pencils of the same marking may vary depending on the company.
Unlike Europe and Russia, in the USA a numerical scale is used to indicate hardness.
| 9H | 8H | 7H | 6H | 5H | 4H | 3H | 2H | H | F | HB | B | 2B | 3B | 4B | 5B | 6B | 7B | 8B | 9B |
| The hardest | → | Average | → | The softest | |||||||||||||||
Despite the apparent simplicity of the pencil, the process of its production is complex, requiring a variety of materials for manufacturing (depending on the production method, requirements for the final product), namely: white clay (kaolin), graphite, binder (from boiled starch for graphite, based on cellulose for non-ferrous), after frying, the slates are placed in oil (coconut, sunflower), melted wax, paraffin, stearin, fat (food, confectionery), wood for boards (alder, poplar (low quality), linden (medium quality) , pine, cedar, jelutong (high quality)), adhesives for bonding (PVA, synthetic (SV sizing)), paint (pigments for slates, for final painting).
All this makes production extremely dependent on suppliers of raw materials / resource base.
For the production of boards, you can use high-quality wood - cedar - a tree that bears fruit for 250 years of its life, after which it begins to gradually die for another 250 years, which allows the use of such trees in production, freeing up space for young growth.
Starting from the 13th century, artists used thin silver wire for drawing, which was soldered to a pen or stored in a case. This type of pencil was called "silver pencil". This instrument required a high level of skill, since it is impossible to erase what it has drawn. Its other characteristic feature was that over time, the gray strokes applied with a silver pencil turned brown. There was also a "lead pencil", which left a discreet but clear mark, and it was often used for preparatory sketches of portraits. The drawings made with silver and lead pencils are characterized by a fine line style. For example, Dürer used similar pencils.
Also known is the so-called Italian pencil, which appeared in the XIV century. It was a core of clay black shale. Then they began to make it from burnt bone powder, fastened with vegetable glue. This tool allowed you to create an intense and rich line. Interestingly, artists still sometimes use silver, lead and Italian pencils when they need to achieve a certain effect.
In 1789, the scientist Carl Wilhelm Scheele proved that graphite is a material made of carbon. He also gave the current name to the material - graphite (from other Greek γράφω - I write). Since graphite was used for strategic purposes at the end of the 18th century, for example, for the production of a crucible for cannonballs, the English Parliament imposed a strict ban on the export of precious graphite from Cumberland. Prices for graphite in continental Europe skyrocketed, as at that time only graphite from Cumberland was considered exceptional for writing. In 1790, the Viennese craftsman Josef Hardmuth mixed graphite dust with clay and water and fired the mixture in a kiln. Depending on the amount of clay in the mixture, he was able to obtain material of varying hardness. In the same year, Josef Hardmuth founded the Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth pencil business, named after the Kohinoor diamond (pers. کوہ نور - "Mountain of Light"). His grandson Friedrich von Hardmuth improved the mixture formula and in 1889 was able to produce rods with 17 different degrees of hardness.
Regardless of Hartmut, in 1795, the French scientist and inventor Nicolas Jacques Conte obtained a graphite dust rod by a similar method. Hartmut and Conte are equally progenitors of the modern pencil lead. Until the middle of the 19th century, this technology was widely used throughout Europe, which led to the emergence of such well-known Nuremberg pencil factories as Staedtler, Faber-Castell, Lyra and Schwan-Stabilo. The hexagonal shape of the pencil body was suggested in 1851 by Count Lothar von Faber-Castell, owner of the Faber-Castell factory, after noticing that round pencils often rolled off inclined writing surfaces. This form is still produced by various manufacturers.
Polymers are used in modern leads, which allow achieving the desired combination of strength and elasticity, making it possible to produce very thin leads for mechanical pencils (up to 0.2 mm).
Almost two-thirds of the material that makes up a simple pencil goes to waste when it is sharpened. This prompted the American Alonso Townsend Cross to create a mechanical pencil in 1869. The graphite rod was placed in a metal tube and could, if necessary, be extended to the appropriate length. This invention influenced the development of a whole group of products that are used everywhere today. The simplest design is a mechanical collet pencil with a 2 mm lead, where the rod is held by metal clamps - collets. The collets are released by pressing a button on the end of the pencil, allowing the user to extend the lead to an adjustable length. Modern mechanical pencils are more perfect - each time the button is pressed, a small section of the lead is automatically fed by a unidirectional pusher, which holds the lead instead of collets. Such pencils do not need to be sharpened, they are equipped with a built-in (usually under the lead feed button) eraser and have various fixed line thicknesses (0.2 mm, 0.3 mm, 0.5 mm, 0.7 mm, 0.9 mm , 1 mm).
In the past, a special kind of graphite pencils was produced - copying(commonly referred to as "chemical"). To obtain indelible traces, water-soluble dyes (eosin, rhodamine or auramine) were added to the core of the carbon pencil. A document filled with an indelible pencil was moistened with water and pressed with a special press (mentioned, say, in The Golden Calf) to a blank sheet of paper. It left a (mirror) imprint, which was filed into the file.
Copying pencils were widely used as a cheap and practical replacement for ink pens.
The invention and distribution of ballpoint pens and carbon paper led to the decline and cessation of the production of this type of pencil.
The etymology of this word, first proposed in Russia in the second half of the 19th century by academician J. Grot, was considered indisputable for a long time, and it still prevails in dictionaries. For example:
pencil. From Turkic. *karadas "black stone", tour. karatas "black slate" (Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language).
Pencil[…] Borrowed from the 16th–17th centuries. from tour. kara-daş "black stone". The pluggable -n- is explained as in tower sound adaptation of the word in folk speech (Shaposhnikov A.K. Etymological Dictionary of the Modern Russian Language).
But this explanation has two major flaws. Firstly, in the Indo-European and Turkic languages, the words for a pencil come from words with the meanings of 'stone', 'reed', 'lead', but none of these words contains the meaning of 'black'. Secondly, etymologists who adhere to the version of the “black stone” did not sufficiently convincingly explain the presence of the sound [n] in the middle of the word. It was generally difficult to do this within the framework of an established hypothesis, and this circumstance was pointed out by Professor N.K. Dmitriev in the article "On the Turkic elements of the Russian dictionary". The usual etymology of the word was called into question, and linguists continued to search for the origins of the word pencil.
In the twentieth century (by such researchers as N. P. Kolesnikov, Yu. Nemeth, etc.) a new version of the origin of the word was proposed pencil, and it is more reasonable than the previous one. Along with the former etymology, it is included in the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language, edited by N. M. Shansky.
So what is the new version?
In ancient Greece and Rome, they wrote with sharply sharpened reed sticks, which the Greeks called Kalamos and the Romans kalamus('cane'). This writing tool was adopted by the Arabs, from them it spread throughout the East, and the name kalam entered many languages, partly changing the appearance and meaning. So, currently in Kyrgyz there is a word kalam‘pen as a writing tool’, in Turkish - kalem, in Georgian - kalami with the same meaning, in Bulgarian - kalam('pencil', 'pen', 'cane'), etc.
The ancient kalam improved over time, and it was first thought to insert lead sticks into hollow tubes made of reed stems, and then graphite rods. And in the Turkic languages a new compound word arose * kalamdaš (from kalam‘reed’ and daš 'stone'). In parallel with it, another word was used with a different order of roots and with the same meaning - daš kalam. The Russian language borrowed the first version in the form pencil.
Why has the pronunciation of this word in Russian changed so much? Etymologists explain this by the fact that in our language (especially in dialects and vernacular) the replacement of the sound [l] with [p], and [m] with [n] is not such a rare occurrence. Examples: musu l manin - bass R manin, obmishu l to go - I will cheat R walk up to m multiple - up to n short, ka m handicap - ka n handicap. In addition, similar processes took place in the Turkic languages, so that the replacement of sounds could also occur in their dialects.
Words ascending to form *kalamdash with the meaning ‘pencil’, in modern Turkic languages it is difficult to find: there are homonyms with the meaning ‘colleague in writing, literary activity’. And to designate a pencil, in order to avoid confusion, the word is used kalam. However, in the Azerbaijani language at the beginning of the 20th century, the word galamdash('pencil'). At present, it has almost been supplanted by the corresponding word borrowed from the Russian language.
In a number of Turkic languages, words are preserved that go back to the ancient form *daskalam(for example, Uzbek toshkalam).
The history of the etymological analysis of the word pencil- an example of how, as science develops, even habitual and established hypotheses are discarded if it is proved that they are not sufficiently substantiated.
And finally - a small addition away from the main topic. According to modern linguists, the Greek word Kalamos(‘reed’) goes back to the same Indo-European root as the Russian word straw. Needless to say, you can learn a lot of amazing things about your native language if you are interested in scientific etymology ...
Literature:
Valeev G.K. Pencil: in search of the motherland of the term // Bulletin of the Chelyabinsk University. Ser. 10. Oriental studies. Eurasianism. Geopolitics. - 2004. - N 1. - S. 156-161.
Vvedenskaya L. A., Kolesnikov N. P. Etymology: Textbook. - St. Petersburg, 2004.
Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. T. 2. - M., 2004.
Shaposhnikov A.K. Etymological dictionary of the modern Russian language. - T. 1. - M., 2010.
Etymological dictionary of the Russian language / Ed. N. M. Shansky. - T. 2. - Issue. 8. - M., 1982.
Over the past century, several generations of writing instruments have changed. Goose pens were replaced by fountain pens, then ballpoint pens. However, the design of another tool - a pencil - turned out to be so ingeniously simple that it has survived almost unchanged from the Middle Ages to the present day and, perhaps, will last for more than one century. In ancient times, those who had to take notes used lead or its alloy with tin. This soft metal left a faint light gray mark on parchment or paper that could be erased with crumb. They drew with both charcoal and black shale, but the convenience of such writing devices left much to be desired.
As often happens, blind chance led to the revolution in the field of writing instruments. In 1564, in Borrowdale, a city in the English county of Cumbria, a storm knocked down several trees, and the locals noticed unusual stones under the roots. They were black, soft and left marks on various surfaces. The fame of the stone, which was called "black lead", or plumbago (lat. "like lead"), soon spread beyond the county: shepherds marked sheep with it, artists inserted pieces of "lead" into wooden cases and used for drawing and writing. The English word lead (lead) is still called a pencil lead today, and in the Dahl dictionary you can see the definition of graphite: “a fossil from which the so-called lead pencil is made” (the Russian word “pencil” itself comes from the Turkic “kara” - black, “dash " - stone). The fact that "black lead" is a crystalline variety of carbon, the Swedish chemist Carl Scheele found out only in 1779, and ten years later the German geologist Abraham Werner gave it the speaking name graphite - from the Greek γράφω, "I write."
For the next two-plus centuries, Borrowdale remained the sole source of graphite for pencils in Europe, as the mineral from other deposits was of poor quality. Graphite became a strategic raw material, the British Parliament in 1752 passed a law according to which the theft of this material or sale on the black market was subject to imprisonment or exile. The UK itself decided who could sell this mineral and who could not. In particular, the island neighbor decided to leave the newborn French Republic without pencils, declaring an economic blockade on it. It is clear that the French did not like such a monopoly, and one of the prominent figures of the French Revolution, Lazar Carnot, asked the inventor, scientist and officer Nicolas Jacques Conte to find a way not to depend on the import of this expensive material. Conte solved the problem rather quickly - he took ground graphite (from other deposits) as a basis, mixed it with clay, molded rods from the resulting composition and fired it in a furnace. The resulting material was much cheaper, and wrote no worse than the best British natural graphite. Moreover, by varying the content of graphite in the mixture, it was possible to obtain different hardness of the leads. In 1795, Conte received a patent for his process, and it is by this method (with minor improvements) that pencils are made today.
