Spall

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Dr. Goodword
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Spall

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:09 pm

• spall •


Pronunciation: spawl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, verb

Meaning: 1. (Noun) A chip, flake, splinter, or other fragment from a piece of stone, ore, or other hard substance. 2. (Verb, transitive) To break into smaller fragments, as for sorting; to chip off. 3. (Verb, intransitive) To break up into fragments.

Notes: This word may be a variant of spale, which has the same meaning. The detachment of small nuclei from a larger one is known in physics as spallation, but the present participle, spalling, serves as adjective and noun for other uses. Someone who fragments stones into smaller pieces is called a spaller.

In Play: The noun use is useful when driving through mountainous countryside: "High, heavy fencing had been erected along the highway to catch the spalls from the rocky mountainside." The verbal use seems in use more widely: "Water freezing on roofing tiles can cause them to spall or crack."

Word History: Today's Good Word and spale were taken from the same Old Germanic source as German spalten "to split" and Danish spilde "lose, spill, waste". The Germanic languages probably inherited their words from PIE (s)pel- "to split, break off", source also of Greek aspalon "skin, hide," Latin spolium "skin, hide", Lithuanian spaliai "chaff", Latvian spals "handle", and, without the Fickle S, Russian polot' "to weed", something you would want to separate from your garden. With metathesis, it could be the ultimate source of English split and German spliessen "to split". (Another newcomer, Susan Maynard, has earned our gratitude for recommending today's more widely useful than used Good Word.)
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Slava
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Re: Spall

Postby Slava » Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:35 pm

Spalling may also be a factor in the recent collapse of the apartment building in Florida:

Image

Full article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57651025
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George Kovac
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Re: Spall

Postby George Kovac » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:12 pm

Yes, Dr GoodWord has a canny knack for selecting topical words—in this case, an unfortunate context.

I had only encountered “spall” in relation to concrete—usually in an engineering report in connection with the inspection of commercial real estate. I did not realize that “spall” has a more general meaning—as in Dr. Goodword’s example of strewn rocks.

There is a synonym for spall that is in fact limited to a single context, as far as I know. When a large piece of ice breaks off from a glacier or shelf ice, the verb is “calve.”
"Every battle of ideas is fought on the terrain of language." Zia Haider Rahman, New York Times 4/8/2016

LukeJavan8
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Re: Spall

Postby LukeJavan8 » Wed Jul 07, 2021 1:02 pm

Calve has been used in the last couple of years in relation
to icebergs that are the size of Manhattan,NY, breaking
off ice sheets in Antarctica. Good catch, George.
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