Solidus

[Morbius]

This word cost me a rosette in yesterday's Challenge puzzle.  It's certainly not common to me, nor to the vast majority of players - only 27 of 352 got it.  A strong candidate for downgrading in my view.

[mkenuk]

Seconded.
It didn't cost me a rosette, I also missed solitude.

Incidentally, the COD has three meanings for the word:
a) a slash (/) but mainly Brit.
b) a term in chemistry
c) a Roman coin.
I wonder which of them is supposed to be common.

[Leedscot]

I didn't do the puzzle, but I use both the symbol and the word constantly in proofreading. And as a lot of the UK's typesetting seems to have gone to India, Singapore etc, no doubt the word is spreading eastwards.

But then I'm also old enough to remember "screamer" for an exclamation mark, and being told that something was "only out by a gnat's cock hair".

Ronald Searle's long-ago cartoon of a printing worker is a brilliant parody of a lot of old terms - I have a copy and I'll try to get it scanned and posted here.

Jock

[Les303]

Seconded.
It didn't cost me a rosette, I also missed solitude.

Incidentally, the COD has three meanings for the word:
a) a slash (/) but mainly Brit.
b) a term in chemistry
c) a Roman coin.
I wonder which of them is supposed to be common.

quote author=mkenuk link=topic=3574.msg55018#msg55018 date=1502082319]
Seconded.
It didn't cost me a rosette, I also missed solitude.

Incidentally, the COD has three meanings for the word:
a) a slash (/) but mainly Brit.
b) a term in chemistry
c) a Roman coin.
I wonder which of them is supposed to be common.
[/quote]

Mike ,

I find it quite reassuring that a player of your vast experience & expertise at this game can miss such a relatively easy word as 'solitude ".
There may be some hope for me after all.
 I missed eight common words in this game.
The frustration is that when I view the solution , there are 6 words that I know & should have been able to find.
" solidus " was certainly not one of those words.
I did play " oldies " & when it was rejected failed to play " oldie ". ( I do recall now that Alan has previously addressed the " oldies " issue.)

Leedscot .. Thought that your post was very funny.

[nineoaks]

Mildly annoyed at discovering 'solidus' considered common, but, oh, well, at least it led to Leedscot posting that glorious Searle drawing.

nineoaks

[TRex]

Incidentally, the COD has three meanings for the word:
a) a slash (/) but mainly Brit.
b) a term in chemistry
c) a Roman coin.
I wonder which of them is supposed to be common.

I'm quite familiar with a) (too much teaching about word processing and print layouts, though I prefer the term virgule) and c) (I read a lot about the Roman Empire, especially the East Roman Empire [not the 'Byzantine Empire' - a stupid name the inhabitants of the Roman Empire never knew which was invented centuries later])

[Roddles]

Loved the printer cartoon.

Solidus is well known to me, as it would be to most geologists, and I guess that is the chemical definition. I'll take a leaf from Calilasseia's book here. When a complex melt (such as molten rock) cools and solidifies, it does so over a temperature range, with the liquidus being the temperature at which the first crystals form, and the solidus being the temperature at which the last crystals form. Some mineral species crystallise out early from the melt near the liquidus temperature, and other mineral species don't crystallise until the temperature falls to near the solidus. That is why crystalline rocks, such as granite and basalt, can have well-formed large crystals of one mineral embedded in a background of other smaller different mineral grains. Those bigger crystals formed early in a largely liquid melt with lots of room to grow, while the crystals in the background formed late when there was competition for space to grow in the crowded mush of crystallising minerals. It is particularly obvious in some volcanic basalt, which contain scattered large rectangular crystals (feldspar) embedded in an otherwise very fine-grained rock. Those feldspar crystals formed deep in the volcano as the melt reached the liquidus temperature as it moved slowly upward. But then, when the eruption occurs, it is so fast that the solidus temperature is reached almost instantaneously, and the remaining melt solidifies very rapidly before the remaining minerals have time to grow.

[a non-amos]

Good on you, Roddles, and that did come to mind, but that is not the only application of the word.  Some alloys, such as solder, exhibit similar properties as they cool and solidify.

In eutectic tin-lead solder the difference between solidus and liquidus is immediate.  The ratio of tin to lead is such that it yields the lowest possible melting point, but also the tin and lead solidify at the same temperature (yielding a nice shiny solder joint).  Both components solidify simultaneously.

The most prevalent lead-free solders are an alloy of tin, silver, and copper.  It is usually impossible to achieve eutectic properties in an alloy of three or more metals; one will solidify before the others, and you will never achieve unison.  The solder goes from a liquidus phase (all components melted) to a pasty phase (some components solidified, others liquid) to a solidus phase (all components solid).

The early growth of some crystals and delayed growth of other crystals produces a matte finish (not shiny), which was of great consternation in the early days of lead-free soldering; until then a joint that was not shiny did not pass QA criteria and was discarded as faulty.

I still consider it a delight when my old background in geology or lapidary arts finds relevance in what I am paid for.

Rock on!

[Alan W]

There was so much fascinating detail here about the various senses of the word solidus that I forgot I hadn't actually responded to the suggestion.

Suffice to say that the various specialist uses of the word do not warrant its common status, so it will be treated as rare from now on.