01 7 / 2012

The wiki: The English word nitrogen (1794) entered the language from the French nitrogène, coined in 1790 by French chemist Jean Antoine Chaptal, from “nitre” + Fr. gène ”producing” Other languages refer to nitrogen has ‘azote,’ from the greek word meaning lifeless, because of the inertness of diatomic nitrogen (Lavoisier himself named it this). Nitrogen is to this day still used to replace oxygen when a less reactive gas environment is needed. The Dutch and German words for the element are stikstof and stickstoff, respectively. ‘Stik’ means to suffocate, which is what happened to any creatures the scientists put under pure nitrogen conditions; and ‘stof’ just means a substance.

The wiki:

The English word nitrogen (1794) entered the language from the French nitrogène, coined in 1790 by French chemist Jean Antoine Chaptal, from “nitre” + Fr. gène ”producing”

Other languages refer to nitrogen has ‘azote,’ from the greek word meaning lifeless, because of the inertness of diatomic nitrogen (Lavoisier himself named it this). Nitrogen is to this day still used to replace oxygen when a less reactive gas environment is needed.

The Dutch and German words for the element are stikstof and stickstoff, respectively. ‘Stik’ means to suffocate, which is what happened to any creatures the scientists put under pure nitrogen conditions; and ‘stof’ just means a substance.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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  1. 487729 reblogged this from centralscience
  2. adventures-in-the-lab reblogged this from centralscience and added:
    That greek term explains a lot of nomenclature, thanks!
  3. restorativetea reblogged this from centralscience
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  8. rolexandmartini reblogged this from centralscience and added:
    Azot, bitches !!!
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  11. cactusbox said: The Finnish word for nitrogen (“typpi”) is derived from the word “typehtyä”, which is a dialectal way of saying “to diminish”, meaning that it is nonflammable&inert. (The term was coined in 1862.) C:
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