galvanize [E19th] Galvanize was first used to mean ‘to stimulate a muscle or nerve by electricity’. It was based on the name of the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani (1737–98), who discovered that frogs’ legs twitched violently when he ran electricity through them. Galvani believed that such convulsions were caused by ‘animal electricity’ found in the body, an idea that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein in 1818. To galvanize iron or steel is to coat it with a layer of zinc to stop it from rusting, originally done by means of an electrical current.