One of Whewell's greatest gifts to science was his wordsmithing. He often corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up with new terms for their discoveries. Whewell contributed the terms scientist, physicist, linguistics, consilience, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism[1] amongst others; Whewell suggested the terms electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, and cathode to Michael Faraday.[2]