Etymology

The roots of the word are from Greek (from Ancient Greek πλέων (pléōn) ‘more’, and and χρῶμα (khrôma) ‘color’). It was first made compound in the German term Pleochroismus by mineralogist Wilhelm Haidinger in 1854, in the journal Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Its first known English usage is by geologist James Dana in 1854.

- an adventitious lexicomane