Word of the Day: Valentine

It's a word with many strong associations for me. I used to write St Valentine's Day letters to a very few young ladies (all of who are now not so young, but as wonderful as ever). If I could digress a bit, I would remember them here and now in this blog; sadly, I suspect most of them would be less than thrilled.

But the word 'valentine' literally means 'an adherent of valentia' — and valentia is the Latin word that means 'the constant capacity for showing strength and power in an appropriate fashion'. You can sense the aura of this word in hymns such as the one that begins: "He who would valiant be 'gainst all disaster / Let him in constancy follow his Master."

A valentine is therefore one who is valiant, who shows valour, who has the property known as 'valency'. Aha, now you know why an alchemist would be so interested in this word. We now use 'valency' to mean 'the maximal or typical combining power of a chemical entity'.

We could just as easily have used another form of the word. Yes, indeed — if not for the occasional banality of scientific terminology, we would be saying things like, "The carbon atom is quadruply valentine."