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galvan(o)-

Electric current.

From the name of the Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani (1737–98).

Galvani discovered that electric currents cause muscles to twitch, and so to galvanize somebody is to provoke them into sudden action as though shocked by electricity; the verb can also mean to cover iron with zinc (so producing galvanized iron), because the zinc was at first deposited from solution using a electrical current. Galvanism can refer either to electricity produced by chemical action or to the therapeutic use of electric currents. A device to measure small electric currents is a galvanometer. The usual adjective is galvanic.

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