Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Xenon
/ˈzɛnɒn/noun
A dense colourless noble gas, element 54, used in high-intensity lamps.
The Greek roots
ξένον
xénon
strange, foreign thing
Literally: “the stranger”
Follow a root:ξένον1 word
The story of the word
Ramsay and Travers named it in 1898 after separating it from the residue left when liquid air had boiled away almost to nothing. Xenos in Greek means both stranger and guest, and the obligations of hospitality it carried were sacred; xenophobia takes the darker half of the same word. Chemists long assumed xenon could not react at all, until Neil Bartlett made a xenon compound in 1962.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1898
Same family
xenophobiaxenophilexenograft
In a sentence
Xenon headlamps give that faintly blue glare in the rear-view mirror.