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Earthquakes, -quaves and -dins
May 13, 2022
Talking about earthquakes
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of earthquake
in English is from the middle of the 14th century. Alternatives at the time included earthquave, earthgrine
and terremote, but how did English-speakers talk about seismic events before that?
The answer is found in an Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
annal from Worcester in 1060, which says "In this year [there] was [a] great earth-din".
Earthquakes are certainly noisy, but a lot of the sound is below the range of human hearing. The US Geological Survey have adjusted the frequency of these sounds so we can hear them, but the Anglo-Saxons didn't have this technology.
Here's a recording of an earthquake in Alaska from 2018, where it's obvious that a lot of the noise is from the movement of the building and its contents.
Taking out the environmental noise, this recording from UC Berkeley may be the best representation of how an Anglo-Saxon might have heard an earth-din.
Creating big headlines from small earthquakes. Low cost Raspberryshake seismometers give schools and citizen scientists access to a global network.