Liquid oxygen in a beaker
10 May 2024
Oxygen is a chemical element with atomic number eight and the symbol O. It is a highly reactive nonmetal that is a gas at room temperature. It’s the most abundant element in the earth’s crust and the third most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium. It constitutes about 21% of earth’s atmosphere. Oxygen is necessary for most life as we know it.
The name oxygen is borrowed from French, which formed the word from the Greek ὀξυ- (oxy-, referring to acid) + ‑γενής (-genis, meaning to create) in the eighteenth century.
The element was discovered independently by Carl-Wilhelm Scheele in 1771 and Joseph Priestley in 1774. Priestley called his discovery dephlogisticated air because oxygen is necessary for combustion. Phlogiston was a hypothetical substance that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, was believed to present in all combustible material and was released when burned. According to this theory, oxygen deprived materials of phlogiston, hence Priestley’s name for it. Antoine Lavoisier, in 1778, was the first to use the name oxigine, and that name stuck in both French and English:
D’après ces vérités, que je regarde déjà comme très-solidement établies, je désignerai dorénavant l'air déphlogistiqué ou air éminemment respirable dans l’état de combinaison & de fixité, par le nom de principe acidisiant, ou, si l’on aime mieux la même signification sous un mot grec par celui de principe oxygine: cette dénomination sauvera les périphrases, mettra plus de rigueur dans ma manière de m’exprimer, & évitera les équivoques dans lesquelles on seroit exposé à tomber sans cesse, si je me servois du mot d’air: ce nom en effet, d’après les découvertes modernes, est devenu un mot générique, & qui s’applique d’ailleurs à des subftances dans état d'éslasticité, tandis qu’il est ici question de les considérer dans l’état de combinaison, & sous la forme liquide ou concrète.
(According to these truths, which I already consider to be very solidly established, I will henceforth designate dephlogisticated air or eminently breathable air in the state of combination & fixity, by the name of acidizing principle, or, if we prefer the same meaning under a Greek word by that of the oxygen principle: this name will save the paraphrases, will put more rigor in my way of expressing myself, and will avoid the equivocations into which we would be exposed to constantly falling, if I used the word air: this name in fact, according to modern discoveries, has become a generic word, and which moreover applies to substances in a state of elasticity, while here we are talking about considering them in the state of combination, & in liquid or concrete form.)
(Lavoisier used the term principe or principle rather than élément.)
Sources:
Lavoisier, Antoine. “Considérations génerales sur la nature des acides.” Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences avec les mémoires de mathématique et de physique. Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1778, 535–47 at 536. Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Miśkowiec, Pawel. “Name Game: The Naming History of the Chemical Elements—Part 1—From Antiquity till the End of 18th Century.” Foundations of Chemistry, 1 November 2022. DOI: 10.1007/s10698-022-09448-5.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2005, s.v. oxygen, n.
Photo credit: Nika Glover, 2010, US Air Force photo. Public domain image.