---
title: "Scientific terminology"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_terminology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:27:36.701353+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Scientific terminology refers to the specialized vocabulary used by scientists and engineers in their professional fields. It encompasses words and expressions created to name newly discovered or invented concepts, materials, methods, and phenomena.
In the early modern period, scientific terminology was predominantly Latin, resulting in naming practices that have persisted into the present.
In science, "naming a particle [or concept] is not just convenient; it marks a leap forward in our understanding of the world". Thus, new technical terms, neologisms, often arise whenever science advances.  For example, the term nanotechnology was coined in 1974 to describe precise engineering at the atomic scale. More generally, neologisms have long been driven by technology and science: "technological advances are among the main drivers of word creation… In many cases, neologisms come about as names for new objects". Likewise, language scholars observe that "science is an especially productive field for new coinages," and scientific terms often spread immediately across languages through research publications. Over time, many such technical terms (e.g. laser, radar, DNA) enter common usage, though at first, they denote concepts known mainly within the field.

== New concepts ==
Scientists frequently introduce new names for novel concepts or discoveries.  Every time a new phenomenon, particle, material, or device is identified, researchers coin a term to describe it.  For instance, in physics new fundamental particles have been named quark, gluon, lepton, graviton, neutrino, Higgs boson, mendelevium (a chemical element), etc. – typically chosen by their discoverers, often honoring a scientist or using classical roots. (Many particle names, like muon or tau, derive from Greek letters; others like electron come from Greek words for amber.) One physics review notes that assigning a name to a newly discovered particle "marks a leap forward" in science. Similarly, interdisciplinary fields often receive portmanteau names by combining existing words. For example, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and astrophysics were coined by joining roots or terms to form a new word. These composite terms help label entire new fields of research and are usually understandable to non-experts.

=== New materials ===
Modern science continually searches for materials with novel properties, and naming them is part of that process. For example, carbon-based nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and graphene were given new names as they were discovered. One source explains that science's focus on advanced materials leads to "an extensive search for new materials having unusual or superior properties" whose names fall into categories like new substances (e.g. nanotubes) or registered trademarks (e.g. Teflon). Such names range from systematic descriptors (glass, steel types, composites) to brand names or acronyms for proprietary materials. Over time, some material names (like transistor or laser) become so widespread that they lose their "technical" feel and enter everyday language.

=== New techniques and devices ===
New experimental methods and instruments also generate terms.  Scientists name each new technique (e.g. polymerase chain reaction, X-ray crystallography) and each new instrument (e.g. scanning tunneling microscope, SQUID detector) to reflect their function.  For instance, the scanning tunneling microscope (invented 1981) is usually referred to by its full name. Other devices, like transistor, magnetron, laser, were named at their invention and have since become common words.  In general, the names of modern devices and methods are coined to describe how they work, often using existing roots or honorifics (e.g. PET scan, MRI for magnetic resonance imaging, PCR as an acronym for polymerase chain reaction).

=== Alternative meaning of common words ===
SIESTA, SQUID and SHRIMP are acronyms distinguished from siesta, squid and shrimp by capitalization. However, there are pairs of scientific terminology and common words, which can only be distinguished by context. Representative examples come from particle physics where certain properties of particles are called flavor, color, but have no relation to conventional flavor and color. Another famous example is frustration used to describe ground state properties in condensed matter physics, and especially in magnetic systems.

=== Composite words ===
Recent scientific activity often creates interdisciplinary fields, for which new names, classified into portmanteau words or syllabic abbreviations, are often created by combining two or more words, sometimes with extra prefixes and suffixes. Examples of those – biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc. – are well known and understood, at least superficially, by most non-scientists.

=== Elementary particles, quasiparticles and chemical elements ===
Progress of particle physics, nuclear physics and atomic physics has resulted in discoveries of new elementary particles and atoms. Their names – quark, gluon, lepton, graviton, neutrino, Higgs boson, mendelevium, etc. – are traditionally given by those people who first discovered them and often include surnames of classical scientists.
Fundamental particles are particles that are not made up by any other particles, such as a quark.
Another group of physics terminology terms, exciton, magnon, phonon, plasmon, phason, polaron, roton etc., refers to quasiparticles – quanta of corresponding excitations (spin, heat, plasma, polarization waves), which do not exist separately and were imagined by theoretists to consistently describe properties of solids and liquids.
Most relevant terminology can be found in the following Wikipedia articles and their links:

Discoveries of the chemical elements
Elementary particle
Quasiparticle
List of quasiparticles
Subatomic particle
(The word plasmon was well-known around the 1900s for a proprietary dried milk manufactured by the International Plasmon Company, which was added to a number of products to make Plasmon Oats, Plasmon Cocoa, and Plasmon Biscuits. Plasmon Biscuits were a popular snack used by Ernest Shackleton in his Antarctic Expedition of 1902.)