The Devil's Metal?

Nickel is the Devil's Metal. Linguistically, at least.

It's interesting how language works. I have found it natural to say that what a butler does is he buttles.

Yes. Of course. A baker bakes. A miner mines. And a butler buttles.

And Nickel is the Devil's Metal.

How? I'll tell you.

In early modern Europe, despite the Bronze Age being long over and the electrical age yet to come, copper was, nevertheless, quite valuable.

So many lovely things, both beautiful and beautifully practical, were made of bronze or brass.

A good, hard metal that does not tarnish or rust easily like iron does, looks good, and is good and hard for practical use was so valuable.

You could get such a metal out of copper by adding tin and getting bronze- or, a bit softer but still good for good practical work and very beautiful, by adding zinc to make brass.

And so copper was still very valuable in early modern Europe.

And so in Germany when they found deposits of what looked like good quality copper ore, they were excited.

But it was not copper ore.

Try as they might, they just could not get copper out of it.

And so they called the false ore the Devil's Copper- Cupfernickel.

Old Nick's Copper.

And so when someone found a good use for the metal that they Could extract from Cupfernickel, naturally, they called this metal Nickel.