cadmium

Etymology

It is borrowed from New Latin cadmium, coined in 1817 by the German chemist Friedrich Stromeyer, who discovered the element;^[2][3][4] Etymonline and Klein spell his name Strohmeyer.^[3][4] He formed it from Latin cadmīa (“calamine, zinc ore”), with the ending of metal names -ium,^[5][6][7][3] because the metal's ores occur together with calamine.^[6][8] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek καδμεία (kadmeía, “calamine”), properly "Cadmean (earth)", with γῆ (gê, “earth”) understood,^[4][2][3] from Κάδμος (Kádmos), Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes.^[4][2][3] Etymonline explains the name by the earth having first been found near Thebes, whose people were called Cadmeans.^[3] The OED instead derives the word from the English noun cadmia, an old name for calamine (1657–1837), with the ending of sodium and other metals.^[9] The Latin word is also the source of calamine.^[9][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A bluish-white metal like tin, found in small amounts in zinc ores: 1822, in T. Webster's new edition of Imison's Elements of Science and Art.^[9][10] Barnhart and Etymonline also date the English word to 1822,^[2][3] while Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1818^[6] and Dictionary.com 1815–25.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its one chemical sense.^[9][6] Its compounds gave names to products: the yellow pigment made from its sulphide, cadmium yellow, is recorded from 1850,^[3][12] and the cadmium cell is a voltaic cell with cadmium electrodes.^[7]

Timeline

• 1822 – the metallic element.^[9][2][3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1818.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A soft, bluish-white, toxic metallic element, symbol Cd, atomic number 48, found with zinc ores and used in electroplating, alloys, batteries and as a neutron absorber in nuclear reactors.^[13][6][12]

Word family

• cadmic
• nicad
• cadmium cell
• cadmium green
• cadmium orange
• cadmium red
• cadmium sulfate
• cadmium sulfide

Related words

• Cadmean
• calamine
• Cadmus

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
13. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins