Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Chromium
/ˈkroʊmiəm/noun
The hard silvery metal used in stainless steel and in bright protective plating.
The Greek roots
χρῶμα
chrôma
colour, complexion
Literally: “colour metal”
Follow a root:χρῶμα11 words
The story of the word
Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin isolated the metal from Siberian red lead in 1797 and named it from χρῶμα because its compounds come out in strong colours: chrome yellow, chrome green, and the red that makes a ruby red. The plating that gave the word its everyday ring came a century later. Chromosome carries the same χρῶμα for a different reason, being named for how greedily it took up laboratory dye.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
chromosomechromaticmonochromechromatography
In a sentence
Chromium in the alloy is what stops the blade rusting.
The bumpers were chromium-plated and pitted with rust underneath.