A naturally occurring or artificially made alloy of gold and silver, or sometimes other metals; historically valued in ancient coinage.
From Latin electrum, from Greek ēlektron (amber, also the alloy). The ancient Greeks named it after amber because amber can be electrically charged. The metal was used for coins in Lydia around 600 BCE.
Electrum is the reason we even have the word 'electricity'—ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing amber created static electricity, and they called both the metal alloy and the amber by the same name, ēlektron.
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