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aluminium: aluminium: [19] Aluminium comes from a coinage by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who discovered the metal. His first suggestion was alumium, which he put forward in Volume 98 of the Transactions of the Royal Society 1808: ‘Had I been so fortunate as … to have procured the metallic substances I was in search of, I should have proposed for them the names of silicium, alumium, zirconium, and glucium’.

He based it on Latin alūmen ‘alum’ (alum is a sulphate of aluminium, and the word alum, a 14th-century borrowing from French, derives ultimately from alūmen; alumina is an oxide of aluminium, and the word alumina is a modern Latin formation based on alūmen, which entered English at the end of the 18th century); and alūmen may be linked with Latin alūta ‘skins dried for making leather, using alum’.

Davy soon changed his mind, however, and in 1812 put forward the term aluminum – which remains the word used in American English to this day. British English, though, has preferred the form aluminium, which was mooted contemporaneously with aluminum on grounds of classical ‘correctness’: ‘Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound’, Quarterly Review 1812.
=> alum
aluminium: see aluminum.
aluminum (n.): 1812, coined by English chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), from alumina, name given 18c. to aluminum oxide, from Latin alumen "alum" (see alum). Davy originally called it alumium (1808), then amended this to aluminum, which remains the U.S. word, but British editors in 1812 further amended it to aluminium, the modern preferred British form, to better harmonize with other metallic element names (sodium, potassium, etc.).
Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. ["Quarterly Review," 1812]
aluminate (1): "A compound or salt in which alumina or aluminium hydroxide is combined with an alkali or base. Also: any of various oxyanions or hydroxy anions of aluminium; a compound containing such an anion", Early 19th cent. From alumina + -ate, apparently after Swedish aluminiat.
aluminate (2): "To coat or cover with aluminium; to treat or cause to react with aluminium; to introduce aluminium into", 1930s; earliest use found in Science News. From alumin- + -ate, probably after aluminated.
alumine: "= alumina", Late 18th cent. From French alumine from classical Latin alūmin-, alūmen, after French -ine. With later use compare -ine.
aluminothermy: "The production of high temperatures by the use of aluminium powder as a reducing agent, especially in a reaction with ferric oxide; reaction of aluminium in this way, with the liberation of heat", Early 20th cent.; earliest use found in Engineering Magazine. From German Aluminothermie.