Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Plutonium
/pluːˈtoʊniəm/noun
A radioactive metallic element, number 94, bred in reactors and used in weapons.
The Greek roots
Πλούτων
Ploútōn
Pluto, lord of the dead
πλοῦτος
ploûtos
wealth
Literally: “of the underworld god”
The story of the word
Glenn Seaborg's group made the first atoms in 1940 and named the element after Pluto, continuing the planetary run of uranium, neptunium, plutonium. Seaborg proposed the symbol Pu rather than Pl as a joke and was surprised when the committee accepted it without comment. The god's own name comes from πλοῦτος, wealth, because the underworld holds both the buried metals and the seed corn.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1942
Same family
plutocracyPlutoplutonic
In a sentence
A few kilograms of plutonium changed the arithmetic of the whole century.