cobalt
/ˈkoʊ.bɔlt/ noun, proper noun
Forms cobalts
- noun A chemical element (symbol Co) with an atomic number of 27: a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal.
- noun Cobalt blue.
- proper noun A community in the town of East Hampton, Middlesex County, Connecticut.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Lemhi County, Idaho.
- proper noun A village in Madison County, Missouri.
- proper noun A town in Timiskaming District, Ontario, Canada.
Synonyms
Etymology
From German Kobalt, formerly also Kobald, ‑olt, ‑old, ‑elt, ‑el, apparently the same word as Kobold (“goblin”), from Middle High German, which became also a Harz Mountains silver miners’ term for rock laced with arsenic and sulfur, so called because it degraded the ore and made the miners ill. Doublet of kobold.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A tough, lustrous, reddish white metal of the iron group, not easily fusible, and somewhat magnetic. Atomic weight 59.1. Symbol Co.
- noun A commercial name of a crude arsenic used as fly poison. Cobalt bloom. Same as Erythrite.
Etymology [G. kobalt, prob. fr. kobold, kobel, goblin, MHG. kobolt; perh. akin to G. koben pigsty, hut, AS. cofa room, cofgodas household gods, Icel. kofi hut. If so, the ending -old stands for older -walt, -wald, being the same as -ald in E. herald and the word would mean ruler or governor in a house, house spirit, the metal being so called by miners, because it was poisonous and troublesome. Cf. Kobold, Cove, Goblin.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cobalt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details