The word was borrowed into English from a French word sufere during the medieval period, which in turn was adopted from Latin, where the word was spelled both sulphur and sulfur . It is abundant, multivalent, and nonmetallic. For the pale yellow nonmetallic element found especially in volcanic deposits, sulfur is the usual spelling in American English.

Sulfur or sulphur is a chemical element with symbol S and atomic number 16. This substance is a mineral which has the atomic number 16 and can be found in … Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a … Sulfur and sulphur are two alternative spellings of the same noun, which refers to a specific element on the periodic table. Sulphur is generally the preferred spelling in nonscientific texts from outside North America, but sulfur … Historically sulphur has been the typical form in British English, while sulfur is usual in American English, having emerged as a variant spelling among chemists in the 1920s. Sulphur is generally the preferred spelling in nonscientific texts from outside North America, but sulfur is gaining ground in scientific writing throughout the English-speaking world The spelling distinction extends to derivative words such as sulfuric/sulphuric, sulfate/sulphate, and sulfide/sulphide.