fluorine

Etymology

It is formed from English fluor + -ine,^[2][3][4][5] perhaps after French fluorine, recorded from 1813 or earlier and now used only for calcium fluoride.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged instead gives the whole name as French, from the New Latin mineral term and French -ine.^[6][7] The chemist Sir Humphry Davy introduced it as a name suggested to him by Ampère.^[8][3] The base is from Latin fluor (“a flowing, flow”), from fluō (“to flow”), the source of fluent.^[8][3][2] Barnhart thinks Ampère knew the mineral term from Agricola's “De re metallica” (1546),^[3] while the OED finds the Latin mineral sense in 1546 in Agricola's “Bermannus”.^[2] Etymonline takes the immediate model to be fluor-spar, the late 18th-century name of calcium fluoride, in which the element was first found.^[8] The element is fluor in French and Fluor in German.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The chemical element: 1813, in a paper by Davy in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, where he calls it "a name suggested to me by M. Ampère".^[2][8][3]

Semantic evolution

The name has kept one meaning; what lies behind it is the older word fluor, a chemists' term from the 1660s for minerals that melted easily and served as fluxes in smelting, said to translate a German miners' name.^[8] From 1771 fluor was applied to minerals containing the element, especially calcium fluoride.^[8] The element was named well before anyone had it in hand: Etymonline notes that it is not known in a free state and was not isolated until 1886.^[8] The OED compares the slightly earlier chlorine, the slightly later iodine and the later bromine, the names of the other halogens.^[2]

Timeline

• 1813 – the gaseous chemical element, in Davy's paper.^[2][8][3][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A toxic, pungent, pale yellow gaseous chemical element of the halogen group, the most electronegative and reactive of all the elements, atomic number 9, symbol F, found mainly in fluorspar and cryolite.^[9][2][6]

Word family

• fluoride
• fluorinate
• fluorination

Related words

• fluor
• fluoric
• fluorite
• fluent
• fluorspar

Usage notes

The first edition of the OED (1897) gave the pronunciation as /ˈfluːərɪn/ or /-aɪn/;^[2] current British pronunciation is /ˈflʊəriːn/ or /ˈflɔːriːn/.^[2] Collins also records the spelling fluorin.^[9]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins