Chrome

How to spell chrome

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chrome

What does chrome mean?

1. nounA hard, shiny chromium plating applied to metal for a bright, mirror-like finish.

Chrome in a sentence

• The vintage car's bumper was finished in gleaming chrome.

• Polishing the chrome on the motorbike took the whole afternoon.

Where does chrome come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Chrome comes from the Greek word chroma, which simply meant 'colour'. When the French chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin isolated a new metallic element in 1797, it was named chrome (later chromium in English) because its compounds appear in such a vivid range of colours, from deep reds to brilliant greens and yellows. English borrowed the French chrome in the early 1800s, first as a name for the element and its pigments, and later as the familiar word for the bright, mirror-like chromium plating used on metal fittings. The same Greek chroma root sits inside everyday words like 'monochrome' and 'chromosome', which were originally named for the way they take up coloured dye. The spelling trap is purely at the front: the Greek 'ch' is pronounced as a hard 'k' sound, so the word opens with a silent-looking 'ch' rather than the 'k' your ear expects.

How the word is built

• chrom- (from Greek chroma: colour)
• -e