Helium

How to spell helium

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce helium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does helium mean?

1. nounA very light, colourless, non-flammable gas that is the second element in the periodic table, used to fill balloons and to cool equipment.

Helium in a sentence

• The party shop filled every balloon with helium so they would float.

• Breathing in helium from a balloon makes a person's voice sound high and squeaky.

Where does helium come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Helium takes its name from the Greek word helios, meaning 'the sun', because the element was first detected not on Earth but in the light of the sun. In 1868 astronomers studying a solar eclipse noticed a bright yellow line in the sun's spectrum that matched no known element, and the chemists Edward Frankland and Norman Lockyer proposed that it came from a new substance, which they named with the classical word for the sun. The ending -ium is the standard Latin-derived suffix used for naming metallic and other elements, the same ending found in sodium, calcium, and titanium. It was almost three decades before helium was actually isolated on Earth, by William Ramsay in 1895, making it the only element discovered in space before it was found here. The spelling keeps the Greek heli- root intact, so remembering the 'sun' connection helps fix the 'e' before the 'l'.

How the word is built

• heli- (from Greek helios: sun)
• -ium (suffix for chemical elements)