What does “wolfraam” mean in Dutch, and why is tungsten named after a wolf?

Wolfraam is the Dutch word for tungsten, the metal once used in light-bulb filaments. The name comes from German Wolfram: wolf plus an old word for the soot or scum (Rahm) that collects on metal. Miners said the ore “ate” tin during smelting the way a wolf devours its prey — a loan-translation of the Latin lupi spuma, “wolf’s foam.”

In this quiz round, contestants rattle off eight answers to one theme — Wolfgang Mozart, Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf, the Wolf of Wall Street, and wolfraam among them. Its chemical symbol, W, still comes from Wolfram. English spared itself the wolf: it borrowed the Swedish name instead, tungsten, “heavy stone,” so English speakers never meet the wolf hiding inside the word.