Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Helium
/ˈhiːliəm/noun
The second element, a colourless inert gas lighter than air.
The Greek roots
ἥλιος
hḗlios
sun
Literally: “sun-stuff”
Follow a root:ἥλιος14 words
The story of the word
During the total eclipse of August 1868 Pierre Janssen saw a yellow line in the solar spectrum that matched no known element. Norman Lockyer and Edward Frankland named the unknown substance helium, after the sun, and gave it the ending -ium because they assumed it was a metal. It is a noble gas, so it sits among neon, argon and krypton with a metal's name, and nobody found any on Earth until Ramsay isolated it in 1895.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1868
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
heliocentricheliotropeperihelionaphelion
In a sentence
The balloons were filled with helium and lasted about a day.