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Radium is a white metal and a chemical element (symbol Ra). It is radioactive: it gives out radiation by itself. About a hundred years ago doctors used it against cancer, and factories painted it onto watch numbers so they would glow in the dark. Though actually, we later learned it is far too dangerous for that — the watch painters became very ill — and doctors now almost never use radium itself. When someone says a patient is "having radiation," they usually mean with other sources, not a lump of this metal. You meet the word in science and history more than at the dinner table.
組成Borrowed from French radium, from radioactif ("radioactive") + -ium (the ending used to name metal elements). The radio- part goes back to Latin radius "ray."
同家族的字
- radioactiveFrench radium was built from radioactif
- radonthe gas named from radium
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
radiumnoun/ˈɹeɪ.dɪ.əm/
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The chemical element (symbol Ra) with an atomic number of 88. It is a soft, shiny and silvery radioactive alkaline earth metal.
- Madame [Marie] Curie, working with her distinguished husband, isolated and first traced to its true origin the source of the marvellous power which has thus commenced to revolutionise our philosophy of physics. This new element has appropriately been named "Radium;" but it has also been shown that there are many other, though less powerful, radio-active elements, details of which are recorded in the sequel. To be precise, radium, per se, has not yet been isolated as a metal, but only in the form of salts,—chlorides and bromides. [...] It is supposed that the molecules of radium (composed of similar atoms) during their decomposition into those of the gas helium, are also frittered down into heat and, in part, are liberated as radio-activity.
- The persistence of radio-activity on glass vessels which have contained radium is remarkable. Filters, beakers, and dishes used in the laboratory for operations with radium, after having been washed in the usual way, remain radio-active: a piece of blende screen held inside the beaker or other vessel immediately glowing with the presence of radium.
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datedbusinessmanufacturingtextilesA type of cloth woven from silk or synthetic yarn, often with a shiny appearance.
- City retailers are doing well with high-class radiums printed in bright greens, brilliant purples and strong yellows. Such are the high novelties.
- In printed silks for outer garments and linings there are crêpe de chines, silk and cotton crêpes, georgettes, radiums and mousselines de soie. [...] [O]n radiums; Japanese print designs, silhouetted with parasols or flowers and shrubs, treated in Japanese style, on dark grounds, are employed. There are also a number of futuristic figures printed on radiums.
radiumverb/ˈɹeɪ.dɪ.əm/
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obsoleteTo treat (a tumour, etc.) with radium.
- We want popular verbs for several operations introduced by modern science. The X-rays, the Finsen treatment for lupus, the operation of radium for cancer, and what not—what are the words for these? A man is guillotined or hanged; his leg is amputated; he is trepanned. What is it when he is rayed, Finsened, radiumed? [From the St. James's Gazette.]
- The victims thereof [i.e., of rheumatism] are drenched with salicylates and iodides; they are sent to spas to be bombarded by the doucheur and spanked by the masseur; they are subjected to electrical ecstasies and suffer Zander contortions; they are cataphoresed, vaccinated, serummed, radiumed and dieted, with results which vary from the sublime to the pathetic.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。