About
The character 镭, with its traditional form 鐳, is a phono-semantic compound consisting of the metal radical 金, which appears as 钅 in the simplified version, and the phonetic component 雷 meaning "thunder". Historically, 鐳 was used in classical Chinese to refer to a wine vessel or container. With the discovery of the element radium in the late 19th century, the character was appropriated for this new metallic substance, where the radical denotes its metal category and 雷 indicates its pronunciation léi.