Definition of "curium" []

• A silvery metallic synthetic radioactive transuranic element. Its longest lived isotope is Cm 247 with a half-life of 16.4 million years. Atomic number 96; melting point (estimated) 1,350°C; valence 3. See Table at element. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Small point: firefox auto-spell check prefers curium over curiam, though it is not attempting anything other than a dictionary search."
• "A quick Westlaw search through Allcases (date 5/1/2010) confirms that “per curium” is still nonstandard: “Per curiam” gets 1427 hits, “per curium” only 10."
• "Yet “per curium” is common enough to be warning people against: A search through the Brief-All file (date 1/1/2010) reports 88 instances of “per curium.”"