alchemy
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈælkəmi/
Forms: form: alchemies
Etymology: From Old French alkimie, arquemie (French alchimie), from Medieval Latin alchēmia, from Arabic اَلْكِيمِيَاء (al-kīmiyāʔ), from Ancient Greek χυμείᾱ (khumeíā, “art of alloying metals”), from χύμα (khúma, “ingot, bar”). Compare Spanish alquimia and Italian alchimia.
Senses: examples: text: And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Æsop makes the fable; that, when he died, told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried underground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the ground, and gold they found none; but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man’s life.
ref: 1605, Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, IV. (11):
text: The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.
ref: 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
text: The purpose of physical alchemy—as opposed to its various spiritual pursuits—was to treat the supposed leprosity of base metals such as lead, refining and purifying them into gold.
glosses: The premodern and early modern study of physical changes, particularly in Europe, Arabia, and China; and chiefly in pursuit of an elixir of immortality, a universal panacea, and/or a philosopher's stone able to transmute base metals into gold, eventually developing into chemistry.
examples: text: O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts:
And that which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.
ref: 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:
text: 1640, George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., in The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert, London: Pickering, 1841, p. 143,
No alchymy to saving.
text: Then of their session ended they bid cry
With trumpet’s regal sound the great result:
Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy,
By herald’s voice explained; the hollow Abyss
Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell
With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim.
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
text: [Poetry] transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
ref: 1840, Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry:
text: There is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I have said that have been, one way or another, through what alchemy I do not know, somehow misconstrued, that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned.
ref: 2016, Boris Johnson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):
glosses: The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.
Hypernyms: protoscience
pseudoscience
Derived terms: alchemical
alchemise
alchemist
alchemistic
alchemistical
alchemize
algeny
practical alchemy
Related terms: elixir of life
philosophers' stone