alchemy
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰew-
Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥
Ancient Greek -μᾰ (-mă)
Ancient Greek χῠ́μᾰ (khŭ́mă)
Proto-Indo-European *-h₂
Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂
Proto-Indo-European *-i-eh₂
Proto-Hellenic *-íā
Ancient Greek -ία (-ía)
Ancient Greek χυμείᾱ (khumeíā)bor.
Arabic الْكِيمِيَاء (al-kīmiyāʔ)bor.
Medieval Latin alchēmīabor.
Old French alkimieder.
English alchemy
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.
Inflected forms:
form: alchemies
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: 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.
There were also letters to scientists and other scholars, pages of derivations of mathematics and physics formulae, and copious writings on alchemy and religion. […] The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason.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.
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.
gloss: The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: 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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
gloss: Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
Related words: elixir of life
philosophers' stone
Derived words: alchemical
alchemise
alchemist
alchemistic
alchemistical
alchemize
algeny
practical alchemy
Translations: