Ytterbium
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A metallic chemical element (symbol Yb) with an atomic number of 70. uncountable, usually
"At a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society held October 20, 1881 (and reported in the Bulletin de la Société Chimique de Paris, for August, 1882), Mendelejeff [Dmitri Mendeleev], the distinguished author of the periodic law, remarked that only two of the recently announced elements—scandium and ytterbium—had been satisfactorily confirmed. These have been obtained in a pure state by [Lars Fredrik] Nilson, and neither of them has absorption spectra."
- 2 a soft silvery metallic element; a rare earth of the lanthanide series; it occurs in gadolinite and monazite and xenotime wordnet
- 3 A single atom of this element. uncountable, usually
Example
More examples"Four chemical elements — yttrium, erbium, terbium, and ytterbium, are named after the village of Ytterby in Sweden, near which they had been first found in the mineral gadolinite."
Etymology
From Ytterby + -ium, named after Ytterby, Sweden, the same etymological source as yttrium, terbium, and erbium.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.