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Origin and history of hydrogen

hydrogen(n.)

colorless, gaseous element, 1791, hydrogene, from French hydrogène (Modern Latin hydrogenium), coined 1787 by G. de Morveau, Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Fourcroy from Greek hydr-, stem of hydor "water" (from suffixed form of PIE root *wed- (1) "water; wet") + French -gène "producing" (see -gen).

So called because it forms water when exposed to oxygen. Nativized in Russian as vodorod; in German, it is wasserstoff, "water-stuff." An earlier name for it in English was Cavendish's inflammable air (1767). Hydrogen bomb first recorded 1947; shortened form H-bomb is from 1950.

also from 1791

Entries linking to hydrogen

hydric(adj.)

1796 as a term in chemistry, "of or containing hydrogen." From 1918 in ecology, "having plentiful water;" see hydro- + -ic.

hydrocarbon(n.)

"compound of hydrogen and carbon," 1800, from hydrogen + carbon. Related: Hydrocarbonaceous; hydrocarbonous (1788).

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H
eighth letter of the alphabet; it comes from Phoenician, via Greek and Latin. In Phoenician it originally had a rough guttural sound like German Reich or Scottish loch. In Greek at first it had the value of Modern English -h-, and with this value it passed into the Latin alphabet
carbohydrate
general name for a group of organic compounds consisting of carbon atoms in multiples of 6 and hydrogen and oxygen in the...
deuterium
So called because it is twice the mass of hydrogen....
proton
-1937) from noun use of Greek prōton, neuter of prōtos "first" (see proto-), on analogy of electron; supposedly because hydrogen...
Vaseline
petroleum, the mother of Vaseline, is produced by the agency of heat and pressure from the carbon of certain rocks, and the hydrogen...
implosion
neglect and confusion have been, they speak in the same breath of all these explosions, and of the explosion of a mixture of hydrogen...
balloon
The meaning "bag or hollow vessel filled with heated air or (later) hydrogen or helium so as to rise and float in the atmosphere...
oh
interjection expressing various emotions (fear, surprise, pain, invocation, gladness, admiration, etc.), 1530s, from Middle English o, from Old French ô, oh or directly from Latin o, oh; a common Indo-European interjection (compare Greek ō; Old Church Slavonic and Lithuanian o; I
ho
exclamation of surprise, etc., c. 1300; as an exclamation calling attention or demanding silence, late 14c. Used after the name of a place to which attention is called (as in Westward-Ho) it dates from 1590s, originally a cry of boatmen, etc., announcing departures for a particul
gas
1650s, from Dutch gas, probably from Greek khaos "empty space" (see chaos). The sound of Dutch "g" is roughly equivalent to that of Greek "kh." First used by Flemish chemist J.B. van Helmont (1577-1644), probably influenced by Paracelsus, who used khaos in an occult sense of "pro

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