If you’ve been known to have a lead foot, you might want to watch out. But when you give such a foot to a person operating a vehicle with an accelerator pedal, the image becomes one of a motorist driving at high speeds. In the 16th century, the adjective leaden-footed described one who moved slowly. Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds, 1871 The diamonds were heavy as a load of lead within her bosom. She was all alone in her misery, and could see no way out of it. But lead, traditionally used in weighted objects such as plumb lines (the Latin plumbum means “lead,” after all) has historically been the go-to element when you want to describe something as immoderately heavy. That honor belongs to osmium (if you’re going by density) or plutonium (if you’re going by its atomic mass). Despite its reputation, lead is not the heaviest of the naturally occurring metals.
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