Yttriums

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of chemical elements in the periodic table characterized by the presence of yttrium and its compounds
2. A subset of elements related to yttrium, often exhibiting similar chemical properties and behaviors
3. Elements within the range of atomic numbers that include yttrium, important in various applications such as electronics and materials science

Etymology: The plural "yttriums" is a little odd in itself, since "yttrium" is a mass noun for a single chemical element, but it is used when speaking of the family of elements that share yttrium's chemical behaviour. Its own history begins in a small Swedish village. In 1787, a lieutenant named Carl Axel Arrhenius found a heavy black mineral in a quarry at Ytterby, an island near Stockholm, and the mineral was named after the village. Chemists later pulled several new elements out of that single rock, and the place name was reshaped into a set of element names. "Yttrium" was built by adding the Latin-style suffix "-ium", the ending chemists used for metallic elements, to the place name "Ytterby". The village name itself combines Old Norse "ytri", meaning "outer", with "býr", meaning "farm" or "settlement", so the name roughly means "outer farm". The same quarry gave its name to erbium, terbium and ytterbium, which are doublets of the same root, all drawn from one Swedish village.

Synonyms: yttrium elements, rare earth metals, transition metals