Earth & SkyGreek → English
Chromite
/ˈkroʊmaɪt/noun
A dark iron-chromium oxide, the only ore worth mining for chromium.
The Greek roots
χρῶμα
khrôma
colour, complexion
-ίτης
-ítēs
connected with (mineral suffix)
Literally: “colour stone”
The story of the word
Vauquelin isolated the metal in 1797 and named it for colour because its compounds produced so many: emerald green, ruby red, the yellow that later went on school buses. The irony is that the ore itself is a dull black lump. Greek χρῶμα originally meant skin or complexion, the surface of a thing, before it came to mean colour in general.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
chromechromosomechromaticmonochrome
In a sentence
Most of the world's chromite comes out of a handful of countries.