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Alchemist: Someone Who Transforms Things for the Better
Today we recognize alchemy as a pseudoscience, and give chemistry its rightful place as a serious scientific field, but the two terms initially overlapped in meaning before separating by the 17th century, just as astrology and astronomy did during the same period.
Alchemy and alchemist are in fact older words than chemistry and chemist in English. Alchemists believed that lead could be “perfected” into gold, that diseases could be cured, and that life could be prolonged through transmutation, or a change of some essential element into a superior form. Their secretive experiments, usually involving heat and the mixing of liquids, led to the development of pharmacology and the rise of modern chemistry.
The long route to English for alchemist began with the Greek word chēmeia, which probably came from the word chyma (“fluid”), derived from the verb chein, meaning “to pour.” It then passed to Arabic, which added its definite article al- (“the”) to the Greek root. The word then passed from Latin to French before coming to English. Some other words derived from Arabic also retain the al- in English, such as algebra, algorithm, and alcohol; in fact, the transformative liquid that was constantly being sought through experimentation by alchemists is another word with the Arabic al- prefix: elixir.
This power to transform things for the better, real or imagined, led to figurative meanings for alchemy and alchemist.
Examples of alchemist in a Sentence
Jason Pettigrew, SPIN, 21 Nov. 2024
An astronomer and an alchemist Brahe was a dynamic scientist during the Renaissance who became famous after his discovery of a supernova in 1572.
—Ashley Strickland, CNN, 27 July 2024
Guillermo Del Toro’s debut film is a radical departure from Dracula and his batty ilk, as vampirism is reimagined as a side effect of the immortality granted by a wondrous mechanism created by a 16th-century alchemist.
—James Grebey, TIME, 18 Oct. 2024
The pop-up's haunted chemist vibe feeds into the Eastern Market distillery's October announcement of a new product release, Absinthe Supérieure Isabella, an absinthe named after a 16th century alchemist.
—Annalise Frank, Axios, 21 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Alchemist.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alchemist. Accessed 17 Dec. 2024.
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