xenon

Xenon is a chemical element with atomic number 54 and the symbol Xe. At standard temperature and pressure it is a dense, colorless, odorless, noble gas. It is used in flash and arc lamps and as a general anesthetic.

The name is a transliteration of the Greek ξένον, a neuter singular form of ξένος (xenos), meaning stranger or guest, presumably because of its rarity in the earth’s atmosphere. It was discovered and named by chemists William Ramsay and Morris Travers in 1898, who suggested the name:

The last fractions of liquefied argon show the presence of three new gases. These are krypton, a gas first separated from atmospheric air, and characterised by two very brilliant lines, one in the yellow and one in the green, besides fainter lines in the red and orange; metargon, a gas which shows a spectrum very closely resembling that of carbon monoxide, but characterised by its inertness, for it is not changed by sparking with oxygen in presence of caustic potash; and a still heavier gas, which we have not hitherto described, which we propose to name “xenon.” Xenon is very easily separated, for it possesses a much higher boiling-point, and remains behind after the others have evaporated.

(Metargon was later shown to be contamination of the sample with carbon.)

Sources:

Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements: Part 2—Turbulent Nineteenth Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 8 December 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09451-w.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. xenon, n.

Ramsay, William and Morris W. Travers. “On the Extraction from Air of the Companions of Argon and Neon.” Report of the Sixty-Eighth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Held at Bristol in September 1898. London: John Murray, 1899, 828–30 at 830. HathiTrust Digital Archive.