ALCHEMY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... the unknown that enable humanity after them to see things more clearly than ever before. There are definite historical grounds for placing Basil Valentine as the first of the series of careful observers who differentiated chemistry from the old alchemy and applied its precious treasures of information to the uses of medicine. It is said to have been because of the study of Basil Valentine's work that Paracelsus broke away from the Galenic traditions, so supreme in medicine up to his time, and began our modern pharmaceutics. Following Paracelsus ...

— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... and the Beginnings of Chemistry, London and New York, 1899. A popular account of the development of the phlogiston theory from alchemy, giving explanations of the curious beliefs and methods of working of ...

— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... else: and I think further that it might have been made into a success of this kind or even of the novel sort itself. But as it stands with the sketch of a completion, I do not think that Flaubert's alchemy had yet achieved ...

— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... excursions from abbey to castle, from castle to church, the graver soirees where Dryasdust revels amidst armor and knicknackery. It is even more amusing to see the Fading Flower step in at the close of this learned preparation, and with a woman's alchemy turn all this dust to gold. A little happy audacity converts the morning meetings into convenient gatherings for the groups of the day, the excursion resolves itself into a refined picnic, the learned soiree becomes a ...

— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... pedestals, distributed harmonies and thoughts of light rather than light itself; and yet all was visible, effulgent. The columns which separated the apartments seemed to be composed of masses of richly-colored flames, compelled, by some ingenious alchemy, to assume the form ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

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