Lithium

How to spell lithium

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce lithium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lithium mean?

1. nounA soft, silvery metallic element, the lightest of the metals, widely used in rechargeable batteries.
2. nounA salt of this element, such as lithium carbonate, prescribed as a mood stabiliser for bipolar disorder.

Lithium in a sentence

• The recycling depot accepts old lithium batteries from phones and laptops.

• Her psychiatrist prescribed lithium to help control her mood swings.

• Demand for lithium has soared as electric car production expands.

• Patients taking lithium need regular blood tests to monitor the dose.

Where does lithium come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Lithium takes its name from the Greek word lithos, which simply meant 'stone'. The element was discovered in 1817 by the Swedish chemist Johan August Arfwedson while he was analysing a mineral called petalite, and the renowned chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius proposed the name because, unlike potassium and sodium, which had first been isolated from plant ashes and animal tissue, this new alkali metal had been found in the mineral, stony world. The standard scientific ending -ium, the same suffix seen in sodium, potassium and calcium, was attached to mark it as a metal. That makes the spelling fairly logical once you see the parts: the Greek 'stone' root lith, then the metal ending ium. The same lithos root surfaces in everyday English words such as 'monolith', a single great stone, and 'lithography', a printing method that originally used a flat stone.

How the word is built

• lith- (from Greek lithos: stone)
• -ium (suffix for metallic chemical elements)