On the first Saturday of each month, Life & Arts taps into the many questions received and answered by the staff of the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
Q: Is it true that penicillin was discovered by accident?
A: Yes. In fact, mankind owes a debt to Dr. Alexander Fleming and his marvelous mistake. In 1928, the Scottish-born physician was in his lab researching the flu virus when he noticed that one of his cultures of bacteria was infected with a fungus. Most scientists would have tossed the spoiled petri dish in the trash, but not Fleming. Six years earlier, he had discovered the mild antibiotic properties of human tears when one of his own accidentally dripped into a bacterial sample. Even mistakes, Fleming learned, have scientific value.
Upon closer inspection, he noticed a clear ring around the fungus, indicating that it was toxic to staphylococcus bacteria in the dish. Fleming isolated the mold, which was of the genus Penicillium, and named his wonder drug penicillin. Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Q: Where did the word gimmick come from? What aboutgizmo ?
A: Gimmick is a noun meaning “a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity or business.” It came into use in the 1920s in the United States but is of unknown origin. It could be an approximate anagram of magic.
Did the word gizmo come from the Arabic shuismo, meaning a gadget, as at least one philologist suggests? The theory is that American soldiers were introduced to the expression in Morocco during World War II, but the theory has not been proved.
(www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/gimmick; Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 3rd edition, Robert Hendrickson)