ALCHEMY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Alchemy

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/ˈælkəmi/ Listen

noun

Alchemy n.

An imaginary art which aimed to transmute the baser metals into gold, to find the panacea, or universal remedy for diseases, etc. It led the way to modern chemistry.

A mixed metal composed mainly of brass, formerly used for various utensils; hence, a trumpet. (Obs.) "Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy."

Miraculous power of transmuting something common into something precious. "Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

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Etymology of 'Alchemy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Alchemy" Quotes from Famous Books

... many a glorious morning I have seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen ...

— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... alchemy," observed he, "and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. Here, ...

— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this peculiar liquid—namely, "alcohol," and its origin is not less singular. The Dutch physician, Van Helmont, lived in the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century—in the transition period between alchemy and chemistry—and was rather more alchemist than chemist. Appended to his "Opera Omnia," published in 1707, there is a very needful "Clavis ad obscuriorum sensum referandum," in ...

— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast academies of astrology, alchemy—magic, in short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices ...

— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... another race of critics who might be designated as the Occult School—vere adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

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