Nitrogen

How to spell nitrogen

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce nitrogen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nitrogen mean?

1. nounA colourless, odourless gaseous element that makes up about four fifths of the air and is essential to living tissue.

Nitrogen in a sentence

• The laboratory stored the samples in liquid nitrogen to keep them frozen.

• Farmers add nitrogen to the soil to help their crops grow.

Where does nitrogen come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Nitrogen was coined in French as nitrogene in 1790 by the chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, combining the older word nitre (a name for potassium nitrate, the chief ingredient of saltpetre and gunpowder) with the Greek element -genes, meaning 'born of' or 'producing'. The whole word therefore literally means 'nitre-producing', because the gas was identified as a constituent of nitric acid and the nitrate salts. The nitre part traces back through Latin nitrum and Greek nitron to an even older Semitic source, the same root that also gives us 'natron', the natural soda the ancient Egyptians used for embalming. English adopted the term almost immediately, and it gradually displaced the Englishman Daniel Rutherford's earlier name 'azote' (Greek for 'without life', since the gas does not support breathing). The spelling trap sits in that unstressed middle and ending: the word reads with an easy schwa, so writers must remember it is -gen, not -gin or -jen.

How the word is built

• nitro- (from nitre/niter, potassium nitrate)
• -gen (producing, from Greek -genes 'born of, producing')