Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Manganese
/ˈmæŋɡəniːz/noun
The brittle grey metal used to harden steel and needed in trace amounts by living things.
The Greek roots
Μαγνησία
Magnēsía
Magnesia, a Greek district
Literally: “of Magnesia”
Follow a root:Μαγνησία5 words
The story of the word
Two black minerals confused their way into this name. Glassmakers used magnesia nigra, pyrolusite, to pull the green tint out of glass and called it glassmakers' soap; the term drifted through Italian as manganese, and when Johan Gottlieb Gahn isolated the metal in 1774 the corrupted spelling stuck. Magnesium was named later from the white magnesia, so the two elements are cousins by way of the same Greek place name and a centuries-old mix-up.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → Italian → French → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
magnesiummagnetmagnesia
In a sentence
Rail steel carries about one per cent manganese for toughness.
Deep-sea manganese nodules have been surveyed for sixty years and mined almost never.