Etymology

heavy metal

Today it means: Any metal that has a specific gravity greater than about 5, especially one, such as lead, that is poisonous and may be a hazard in the environment. (There are many different definitions of what counts as a heavy metal; see Heavy metals for a discussion.) Full definition →

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The story

According to the Oxford World's Classics edition of Anthony Trollope's Rachel Ray (1863), "big guns," as on a warship. The origin of the music genre sense is often disputed; it was used by William S. Burroughs in Soft Machine and Nova Express and various music critics claim to have coined it: Sandy Pearlman, Lester Bangs and Mike Saunders.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.