samarium
/səˈmɛɹ.i.əm/noun
samarium is a noun meaning “A chemical element (symbol Sm) with an atomic number of 62, a moderately hard silvery metal that slowly oxidizes in air. Applications in human…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-A-M-A-R-I-U-M and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does samarium mean?
noun
- 1
A chemical element (symbol Sm) with an atomic number of 62, a moderately hard silvery metal that slowly oxidizes in air. Applications in human affairs include magnets with high performance at high temperatures, which are important in military equipment.
- 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 samarium?
- UK /səˈmɛə.ɹi.əm/
- US /səˈmɛɹ.i.əm/
- /səˈmæɹiəm/
Samarium has 4 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vininn126-samarium.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-samarium.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-samarium.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is samarium?
Samarium appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th 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).
Samarium in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense chemical element:
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 samarium come from?
After samarskite, in turn honoring Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).