Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A silvery metallic synthetic radioactive transuranic element, having isotopes with mass numbers ranging from 233 to 252. The most stable isotope (Cm-247) has a half-life of 15.6 million years. Atomic number 96; melting point 1,345°C; specific gravity (calculated) 13.51; valence 3, 4. cross-reference: Periodic Table.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun a radioactive transuranic element of atomic number 96, having an atomic weight of 247 for its most stable isotope (half-life 1.6 x 107 years). The chemical symbol is Cm.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
transuranic chemical element (symbol Cm) with anatomic number of 96.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a radioactive transuranic metallic element; produced by bombarding plutonium with helium nuclei
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A quick Westlaw search through Allcases (date 5/1/2010) confirms that “per curium” is still nonstandard: “Per curiam” gets 1427 hits, “per curium” only 10.
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A tip for lawyers (and others): The standard phrase for certain kinds of unsigned court opinions is “per curiam,” not “per curium” — except perhaps in science fiction stories involving decisionmaking by artificially intelligent radioactive-element-driven quantum computers.
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What I never understood is why people add in a parenthetical stating that the decision is a “per curiam” — or, for that matter, a “per curium.”
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Small point: firefox auto-spell check prefers curium over curiam, though it is not attempting anything other than a dictionary search.
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A contemporary English speaker who uses “per curium” has made a simple mistake, and unless Latin comes back into everyday use, the Latin language will never evolve to embrace it.
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Yet “per curium” is common enough to be warning people against: A search through the Brief-All file (date 1/1/2010) reports 88 instances of “per curium.”
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A quick Westlaw search through Allcases date 5/1/2010 confirms that “per curium” is still nonstandard: “Per curiam” gets 1427 hits, “per curium” only 10.
-
A contemporary English speaker who uses “per curium” has made a simple mistake, and unless Latin comes back into everyday use, the Latin language will never evolve to embrace it.
-
Yet “per curium” is common enough to be warning people against: A search through the Brief-All file date 1/1/2010 reports 88 instances of “per curium.”
-
A tip for lawyers and others: The standard phrase for certain kinds of unsigned court opinions is “per curiam,” not “per curium” — except perhaps in science fiction stories involving decisionmaking by artificially intelligent radioactive-element-driven quantum computers.
oroboros commented on the word curium
Cm.
December 16, 2007