Gamma
/ˈɡæmə/noun
The third letter of the Greek alphabet, used for the highest-energy electromagnetic radiation and for a range of technical quantities.
The Greek roots
Literally: “camel, from Phoenician gīml”
The story of the word
Third letter, from Phoenician gīml, camel. Guido of Arezzo labelled the lowest note of the medieval scale gamma and its syllable ut, and gamma ut contracted into gamut, which now means the entire range of anything at all. Physics gave the letter to the most energetic radiation known: Paul Villard found it coming off radium in 1900, and Rutherford named it gamma in 1903 as the third kind after alpha and beta.
- How it travelled
- Phoenician → Ancient Greek → Latin → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Gamma from the source drops off with the square of the distance, so they moved the bench.
Set the gamma too high and every shadow in the image goes flat.