On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, David Silberstein wrote: > Looking at the OED for "periodic", I see that it is from the Greek for > (peri) around + (odos) way. "Way" has a good Germanic heritage, but > that leaves us with the problematic "around" (OED says "rare before > 1600"). > > Now, while the Old English for the concept of "round" may be lost to > us, I would suggest that an alternate might be "wheel". Wheels are > necessarily round; more to the point, "wheel" would be used in other > places for "cycle", and similar words. The original usage of "period" > was only applied to time; the table of elements could just as easily > be called "cyclic" as "periodic". > > So therefore, the concept of "periodic" in chemistry might be > expressed by "wheelwayish". > With a little more effort, I might be able to come up with some other > possibilities. How about backturning? Or again-and-again-turning?