Aluminum

How to spell aluminum

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aluminum

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aluminum mean?

1. nounA lightweight, silvery, corrosion-resistant metal widely used in packaging, construction, and transport.

Aluminum in a sentence

• The cyclist chose a frame made of aluminum to keep the bike light.

• Recycling one can of aluminum saves a surprising amount of energy.

Where does aluminum come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin alumen, which named alum, a bitter astringent salt that ancient peoples used in dyeing cloth and stopping bleeding. The English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, working in the early 1800s, was the first to propose names for the metal he believed lay hidden in alumina (the oxide). He tried 'alumium' around 1808, then settled on 'aluminum' in 1812, which is the form that took hold in the United States and Canada. British scientists soon preferred 'aluminium', adding an extra 'i' so the word would chime with other elements such as sodium and potassium. That single editorial choice is why the spelling forks by region today: the American form ends in -num while the British form ends in -nium. Remembering that the Latin root is alumen, with no second 'i', helps anchor the shorter aluminum spelling.

How the word is built

• alumin- (from Latin alumen, alum)
• -um (suffix marking a chemical element or metal)

British and American spelling

Aluminum is the American spelling. British English spells it aluminium.