Worlds and words of chemistry

Abstract

Abstract Apart from giving an overview of chemistry—for a period called ‘chymistry’—and its language through history, this chapter discusses a number of eponymous chemical names as well as examples of meaning transfers where a word migrates from the domain of science to common language or vice versa. Lavoisier’s so-called chemical revolution in the 1780s relied crucially on a reformed chemical nomenclature, a story detailed in one of the sections. Each of the 118 elements has its own naming history, some of which are told in the last two sections of the chapter. The last one focuses on the artificially produced elements with atomic numbers greater than 92.