"I took them for a faery vision, Of some gay creatures of the element," wrote Milton in Comus; the lines reminded me that only once have I heard element, meaning the sky, atmosphere, heavens, firmament, used in the singular.
This was in Kilmore Quay in Co Wexford, some time around 1970, when an old salt named William Blake looked up and said that he didn't like the look of the element. My dialect glossaries tell me that in many places in rural England "element" is used just as old Mr Blake used it: I find "the element looked nice and blue this morning" recorded in Hardy's Dorset; while Michael Parkinson might say "The element looks fearful heavisome."
Element is used figuratively in Ireland, but as far as I can tell, not across the water. The Folk-Lore Journal, volume IV, of 1886, recorded "That's the element!" in Donegal. It adds a gloss: "Intended to indicate that what is going on is above the common; especially when describing good music."
Wright's great dialect dictionary recorded in Westmeath: "He has a great element for shooting." Patrick Kennedy in The Banks of the Boro, published in 1867, has this from Wexford: "If he happened to have reached the quarrelsome stage of his element. . ." We've all heard that somebody or other was in his or her element - in the same stage of command as Kennedy's man.
Element is from the Old French element, from the Latin elementum, of which the etymology and the primary meaning are uncertain, but which was employed as a translation of a Greek word which had various meanings, including a member of the planetary system. The sense of Milton's element, and Blake's, is due to the Medieval Latin elementum ignis as the name of a fiery, starry sphere, a comet.
John Murphy of Oak Grove, Cricklewood, plays a fiddle badly, he tells me: nevertheless he would like to know where the word fret comes from (a fret is the bar placed on the fingerboard to regulate the fingering).
The word is of uncertain origin. It doesn't appear in English until 1500. Later, in The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has: "I did but tell her she mistook her frets, And bow'd her hand to teach her fingering."
Perhaps the word is from the Old French frete, a ring, a ferrule. Another guess is that it's from an assumed Old French freiter (modern French dialect frotter), from Italian frettare, from Latin fricare, to rub. The trouble is, the old French freiter hasn't been found.