Metals

How to spell metals

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce metals

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does metals mean?

1. nounSolid, usually shiny materials such as iron, gold, or copper that conduct heat and electricity.

Metals in a sentence

• The recycling centre separates plastics from metals before processing.

• Precious metals such as gold and silver held their value during the downturn.

Where does metals come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek metallon, which originally meant a mine or a quarry, the place where ore was dug out of the ground, and only later came to mean the substance extracted from it. The Romans borrowed the word as metallum, applying it both to mines and to the worked material itself. From Latin it passed into Old French as metal, and English took it up in the 1200s and 1300s. The plural simply adds -s, so the everyday spelling trap is the single t and the single l, since the word is built on metal rather than the doubled forms some writers expect. A close relative is metallurgy, where the original double l of the Latin metallum survives more visibly.

How the word is built

• metal (from Greek metallon: mine, metal)
• -s (plural)