Alchemy

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Alchemy \Al"che*my\, n. [OF. alkemie, arquemie, F. alchimie, Ar.
     al-k[imac]m[imac]a, fr. late Gr. ?, for ?, a mingling,
     infusion, ? juice, liquid, especially as extracted from
     plants, fr. ? to pour; for chemistry was originally the art
     of extracting the juices from plants for medicinal purposes.
     Cf. Sp. alquimia, It. alchimia. Gr. ? is prob. akin to L.


     fundere to pour, Goth. guitan, AS. ge['o]tan, to pour, and so
     to E. fuse. See {Fuse}, and cf. {Chemistry}.]
     1. 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.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A mixed metal composed mainly of brass, formerly used for
        various utensils; hence, a trumpet. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy. --Milton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. Miraculous power of transmuting something common into
        something precious.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
              Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. --Shak.
        [1913 Webster] Alchymistic
        Alchymist
        Alchymic

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  alchemy
       n 1: a pseudoscientific forerunner of chemistry in medieval times
       2: the way two individuals relate to each other; "their
          chemistry was wrong from the beginning -- they hated each
          other"; "a mysterious alchemy brought them together" [syn:
           {chemistry}, {interpersonal chemistry}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  62 Moby Thesaurus words for "alchemy":
     about-face, assimilation, assumption, becoming, bewitchery, change,
     change-over, charm, conversion, divination, enchantment, fetishism,
     flip-flop, glamour, gramarye, growth, hoodoo, juju, jujuism, lapse,
     magic, natural magic, naturalization, necromancy, obeah, passage,
     progress, re-formation, reconversion, reduction, resolution,
     reversal, rune, shamanism, shift, sorcery, sortilege, spell,
     spellbinding, spellcasting, switch, switch-over, sympathetic magic,
     thaumaturgia, thaumaturgics, thaumaturgism, thaumaturgy, theurgy,
     transformation, transit, transition, turning into, vampirism,
     volte-face, voodoo, voodooism, wanga, white magic, witchcraft,
     witchery, witchwork, wizardry