The Casual Etymologist: Word of the Week

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
by John Martin, 1852

Firstly, my humble apologies, oh faithful reader. You have, I'm sure been wracking your poor old brain to try and figure out why this week has been different. You've probably passed the nights murmuring gibberish to yourself in a cupboard, thrown some expensive electronic equipment into a river or off a motorway overpass, or started hanging out in an Aldi car park in the rain waiting for some sort of sign. For all this I am deeply sorry, and I shall not perpetuate your mental torment a moment longer. I missed Word of the Week last week, and it shan't happen again.

So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you this week's etymological selection. Drawn from the bright and bubbling vein of the fantastic Libarius glossary of middle English, this week's Word of the Week is:

Brymstoon, noun sulphur


For anyone that has spent any time in church, or even just sat picking your nose and staring out the window in an RE class, you cannot have failed to pick up on the phrase 'fire and brimstone'. It is the unpleasant and unrelenting doom that shall be rained upon you should you ever choose to undertake a career as a murderer or an evil wizard. In fact, I say rained, it is actually referred to most often in the St James bible as 'the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone'. Now you're thinking 'skinny dipping for eternity doesn't sound so bad', well it's not that kind of lake. And the lifeguard is a total douchebag.

Anyhow, this is all well and good, but how did sulphur get such a bad-ass nickname and reputation? Sulphur, as you'll know is a naturally occurring chemical element. It has been used for everything from medicine to bleaching paper and drying fruit. It's acrid odour and yellow fumes are umistakable. It many parts of the world it is still mined by hand in treacherous conditions, generally near or in the rim of live volcanos. There is something about the word 'brimstone' that evokes a smoking, bubbling cauldron, overspilling its pugent and toxic fumes like dry ice in an 80s fantasy movie. But what about the biblical references?

In the painting above, by the victorian painter John Martin, we can see the dramatic destruction of the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities, supposedly located somewhere north of the Dead Sea, were teeming with an assortment of the most base and sordid characters this side of Eden. As a consequence God swiftly dispatched of them all, in a violent storm of guess what? You got it.

For years archaeologists have argued over the real-life location of these cities, and if they were indeed so suddenly smoted into non-existence, what unholy phenomena could have caused it. Various theories have surfaced over time, including floods, epic sandstorms, and even an asteroid impact. The theory that seems to hold most weight however, is much simpler.

The Dead Sea region, believed to be the historical location of Sodom and Gomorrah is situated on an enormous geological faultline known as the Great Rift Valley. Earthquakes measuring up to 8.0 on the Richter scale have been recorded here, and it is thought that an earthquake of this magnitude could have caused pockets of sulphur and natural gases to erupt into the air. And when ignited by fire or a lightning strike, could have caused a conflagration if not of apocalyptic proportions, then certainly destructive enough to wipe out a small, bronze-age settlement in the middle of the Desert.