mendelevium
men·de·lev·i·um/ˌmɛn.dəˈli.vi.əm/noun
mendelevium is a noun meaning “A radioactive metallic transuranic chemical element (symbol Md) with atomic number 101, which is artificially produced in a particle accelerator” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-E-N-D-E-L-E-V-I-U-M and has 5 syllables (men·de·lev·i·um), and it appears about once in every 98 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does mendelevium mean?
noun
- 1
A radioactive metallic transuranic chemical element (symbol Md) with atomic number 101, which is artificially produced in a particle accelerator.
- 2
An atom of this element.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce mendelevium?
- UK /ˌmɛn.dəˈliː.vi.əm/
- UK /-ˈleɪ-/
- US /ˌmɛn.dəˈli.vi.əm/
Mendelevium has 5 syllables, split men·de·lev·i·um in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-mendelevium.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-mendelevium.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-mendelevium.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of mendelevium
- mendeleevium
- mendeleyevium
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is mendelevium?
Mendelevium appears about once in every 98 million words in written English, the 317,168th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Mendelevium in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense chemical element with atomic number 101:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | mendélévium |
| German | Mendelevium |
| Portuguese | mendelévio |
| Spanish | mendelevio |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does mendelevium come from?
From a modified version of Mendeleev + -ium (suffix forming names of metal elements), named in honour of the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) who formulated the periodic law and created an early version of the periodic table of elements. The word was proposed by a team from the University of California, Berkeley, comprising the team leader Stanley Gerald Thompson and members Gregory Robert Choppin, Albert Ghiorso, Bernard George Harvey, and Glenn T. Seaborg, who artificially synthesized the element in early 1955.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).