Alchemy

Quick meaning: Alchemy is a noun meaning (countable) The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.

Meaning

(countable) The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.

More Meanings

1. (computing, slang, countable) Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.
2. (uncountable) 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.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• alchemies

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include chemistry, transmutation, connection, magic, chymistry, hermeticism.

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