lithium

plural lithiums

1. uncountablechemistryThe simplest alkali metal, the lightest solid element, and the third lightest chemical element (symbol Li) with an atomic number of 3 and atomic weight of 6.94. It is a soft, silvery metal.

   The importance of lithium-ion batteries makes lithium a potentially strategic natural resource.

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   Already, beautiful places are being wrecked by an electric vehicle resource rush. Lithium mining, for example, is now poisoning rivers and depleting groundwater from Tibet to Bolivia.

   2019, George Monbiot, “Cars are killing us. Within 10 years, we must phase them out”, in Guardian.

   1. countablechemistryA single atom of this element.
2. uncountablemedicineLithium carbonate or other preparations of lithium metal used as a mood stabiliser to treat manic depression and bipolar disorders.

   It seems like his moods are better since he started taking lithium.

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   There's more: Part of the reason I am so meek is that I stopped taking my lithium a few weeks before. It's not that I have a death wish, and it's not that I'm like Axl Rose and think that lithium makes me less manly (he supposedly stopped taking it after his first wife told him that his dick wasn't as hard as it used to be and that sex with him was lousy;[…]).

   1994, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN, page 4

   Lithium has been used as a mood stabiliser for 50 years but its action mechanism is still unclear.

   2008, Barbara Kozier, Fundamentals of Nursing: Concepts, Process and Practice, Pearson Education, →ISBN, page 191

3. countableA lithium battery.

1. An inactive village in Perry County, Missouri.