Myth & LegendGreek → English
Cadmium
/ˈkædmiəm/noun
A soft toxic blue-white metal, element 48, used in pigments, plating and batteries.
The Greek roots
Κάδμος
Kádmos
Cadmus, founder of Thebes
Literally: “Theban earth”
Follow a root:Κάδμος1 word
The story of the word
Friedrich Stromeyer found it in 1817 in zinc carbonate that had turned yellow when it had no business doing so, and named it from cadmia, the old Latin name for that ore. Cadmia goes back to καδμεία γῆ, Theban earth, and Thebes goes back to Κάδμος, who sowed the dragon's teeth and, in the Greek account, brought the alphabet from Phoenicia. Calamine, the pink lotion, is the same word again after a few centuries of French wear.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1817
In a sentence
Cadmium yellow gave painters a colour that would not fade, at a price paid by the people who ground it.