Today’s Vocabulary Lesson

Sometimes little things that shouldn’t bug me really do.

For example, if I see another real estate listing that touts, among a home’s features, a “PALLADIUM” window, I think I will barf. I see it at least once a week as I cruise the real estate listings. There’s a house down the street in the Vinyl Village on the market, it has a half round window in the front. Sure enough, the realtor says “You’ll love the gorgeous Palladium window in the dining room!” But the realtor is wrong…on two counts!

Here’s a lesson kids…

Palladium is a a rare metallic element of the platinum group, silver-white, ductile and malleable, harder and fusing more readily than platinum: used chiefly as a catalyst and in dental and other alloys. Symbol: Pd; atomic weight: 106.4; atomic number: 46; specific gravity: 12 at 20°C. 

So unless the previous owners chiseled out all of their old fillings to make windows, chances are that the poor misinformed realtor really wants us all to know that the house has a PALLADIAN window. Which looks like this:

And it must look just like that. The entire composition of three parts is a Palladian window. This also seems lost on realtors who will describe any window with an arch top or a half round as “Palladium!”.

To recap:

Palladium:

Palladian:

Cheap Ass Builder-Grade Round Window, not Palladium or Palladian:

Whew…I feel better now.