chlorine
/ˈklɔːriːn/noun
Yellow-green reactive chemical element, atomic number 17
From Greek χλωρός (khlōrós) (pale green).
Lineage
The story
In 1774, chemists first encountered chlorine but treated it as “oxymuriatic acid gas,” a rather alarming name for a yellow-green substance that attacks living tissue and metals alike. Sir Humphry Davy gave it a cleaner identity in 1810, borrowing Ancient Greek χλωρός, meaning “pale green,” and attaching the chemical ending -ine. That same color-family survives in chloroform and chlorophyll, so a swimming pool, a leafy plant, and an old-fashioned anesthetic are linguistic cousins. The element belongs to the halogens—literally “salt-producers”—but chlorine’s name remembers something more immediate: the eerie greenish-yellow gas itself, glowing like chemistry’s warning label.
Modern usage
Chlorine or pool chemicals, especially in casual references to swimming pools or their effects on hair and smell
- Heard in
- swimming pools · hair and beauty
- See
- Urban Dictionary entries describing pool chlorine and its effects on hair and odor
Words from the same roots
χλωρός (khlōrós) · Ancient Greek, ‘pale green’
Derivedchlorine, chloroform, chlorophyll, chlorosis, chloride