Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Neon
/ˈniːɒn/noun
An inert gas, element 10, that glows red-orange in a discharge tube.
The Greek roots
νέον
néon
new thing
Literally: “the new one”
Follow a root:νέον1 word
The story of the word
William Ramsay and Morris Travers pulled three new gases out of liquid air in 1898. Ramsay's thirteen-year-old son suggested calling the first one novum; his father liked the sense but wanted Greek to match argon and krypton, so it became neon. Georges Claude built the first commercial neon sign in Paris in 1910. Strictly, only the red-orange tubes contain neon; the blue and green ones are argon and mercury.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1898
Same family
neophyteneolithicneologism
In a sentence
One neon tube in the window still worked, buzzing.