Uranium

How to spell uranium

7 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce uranium

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does uranium mean?

1. nounA heavy, radioactive metallic element used as fuel in nuclear reactors and in nuclear weapons.

Uranium in a sentence

• The power station relies on enriched uranium for its fuel rods.

• Inspectors measured the uranium stockpile held at the secure facility.

Where does uranium come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Uranium was named in 1789 by the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who had just isolated it from the mineral pitchblende. He chose the name to honour the planet Uranus, which the astronomer William Herschel had discovered only eight years earlier, in 1781. The planet in turn took its name from Ouranos, the ancient Greek god of the sky, whose name literally meant 'the heavens' or 'sky'. The chemical suffix -ium, the same ending found in sodium, calcium, and titanium, was attached to mark it as a metallic element. So the spelling preserves a tidy chain from Greek sky-god to planet to metal, and the single 'r' followed by 'an' (not 'arr' or 'ar') is the small detail worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• uran- (from the planet Uranus)
• -ium (suffix naming a metallic chemical element)