Myth & LegendGreek → English
Tantalum
/ˈtæntələm/noun
A hard, corrosion-resistant blue-grey metal, element 73.
The Greek roots
Τάνταλος
Tántalos
Tantalus, punished king
Literally: “of Tantalus”
Follow a root:Τάνταλος2 words
The story of the word
Anders Ekeberg identified it in Sweden in 1802 and named it after Τάνταλος, who stood forever in water he could not drink beneath fruit he could not reach. The joke is chemical: the metal sits immersed in acid and will take up none of it. Tantalise comes from the same punishment, and the ore that carries the metal, coltan, is the reason a mineral fought over in central Africa ends up inside every phone capacitor.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1802
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
tantalisetantalite
In a sentence
Tantalum capacitors hold their value in heat that would kill anything cheaper.