A reader (Martin) has written to ask an interesting question: ‘How did people being motivated to perform to a high standard become associated with ‘dipping steel into molten zinc’, that is, being “Galvanised”?’
And we understand what he means, don’t we?
We are familiar with both uses of the word ‘galvanised.’
We talk about ‘galvanised iron’ and we also say that ‘The promised bonus galvanised the staff into action.’
Both uses make sense, so how are they connected?
The word ‘galvanised’ comes from the name of the Italian doctor and physicist Luigi Galvani (1737-1798).
And what he described was the way that an electrical charge could make the muscles of dead frogs’ legs move.
This was the discovery of what is now called ‘bioelectricity.’
Biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells.
Galvani continued actively investigating animal electricity until the end of his life.
Which is all very good—but where does the coating of iron and steel come into this?
The answer is: very much later.
Galvani’s experiments (and the original use of the word ‘galvanised’) was in the 1700s.
Later, in the 1800s, it was discovered that a protective coating of zinc could be applied to steel using an electrical charge.
So, what we think of as the figurative use (‘galvanising’ people enlivens them) came first—it preceded by a century the production of galvanized steel.
So, there you are Martin, we are not applying the metallic process to people, but the other around—it was the existing biological word that was applied to iron and steel.
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