al·che·my

(ăl′kə-mē)

1. A medieval chemical philosophy having as its asserted aims the transmutation of base metals into gold, the discovery of the panacea, and the preparation of the elixir of longevity.

2. A seemingly magical power or process of transmuting: "He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger the next" (Marjorie K. Rawlings).

[Middle English alkamie, from Old French alquemie, from Medieval Latin alchymia, from Arabic al-kīmiyā' : al-, the + kīmiyā', chemistry (from Late Greek khēmeia, probably alteration of khumeia, from Greek khein, khu-, to pour; see gheu- in Indo-European roots (influenced, owing to the reputation of Egyptian alchemists, by Greek Khēmiā, Egypt, from Egyptian kmt, Egypt, from feminine of km, black, in reference to the black soil of the Nile valley)).]

al·chem′i·cal (ăl-kĕm′ĭ-kəl), al·chem′ic adj.

al·chem′i·cal·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

alchemical - related to or concerned with alchemy

alchemic

Translations

alchimique

alquímico

alchemical

[ælˈkemɪkəl] ADJ → alquímico, de alquimia

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

alchemical

[ælˈkɛmɪk^əl] adj → alchimique

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

alchemical

adj → alchimistisch

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Even educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory.

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She covers Chinese inner alchemy and body maps, different versions of the Xiuzhen Tu, a description of it, the main alchemical loci it inscribes, its account of the body and the world of deities, alchemical methods, and thunder processes illustrated for it.

Taoism and Self Knowledge: The Chart for the Cultivation of Perfection (Xiuzhen Tu)

When Isaac Newton's alchemical papers surfaced at a Sotheby's auction in 1936, the quantity and seeming incoherence of the manuscripts were shocking.

What We Are Reading Today: Newton the Alchemist

Meredith Ray's research focuses on the popular Renaissance genre of books of secrets, which were collections of published-yet-private recipes for creating health remedies, beauty treatments, and alchemical transformations.

Daughters of Alchemy. Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy

The maxim "Dissolve and coagulate" encompasses in its precision not only Jung's extensive alchemical deliberations but also Coleridge's theoretical formulations on "Imagination." A conceptual belief in life's struggle towards unification and coherence is seen in Jung and Coleridge both as the outcome of an intense struggle of conflicting and contending mental and psychological processes in the background.

An Alchemical Exposition of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

The Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales: The Alchemical Secrets of Mother Goose joins literary analysis with spiritual concerns in exploring the stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm, Perrault and others, showing how hermetic ideas of alchemy and magic are embedded in fairy tale classics.

The Initiatory Path in Fairy Tales

Lessons in Greek and philosophy are the highlight of seventeen-year-old Santina Pietra's week, but when a shared passion for alchemy and learning evolves into passion of a different sort, Santina's tutor, the dreamy scholar Calandrino, chooses to leave San Gimignano to pursue his interest in the discovery and translation of ancient alchemical texts.

Alchemy's Daughter

After years of marriage and motherhood, Venetia fears her looks are fading and turns to her husband's alchemical experiments for a cure.

Viper Wine

He identifies several metallic and mineral substances they used and that he has been able to recreate in his own laboratory, some of the alchemical experiments producing a "star regulus" of antimony and a "Philosophers' Tree," which he illustrates.

The Secrets of Alchemy

One could say that the best alchemical secret is how radically our knowledge of alchemy has changed over the past few decades.

The Secrets of Alchemy

In one sense, Dickey created a mythological and hidden self, but did so to illuminate a tangible, more realized self--a self which could become transformed through the alchemical process of writing.

Chrysopoeia: metaphysical reflections on transformation in James Dickey's "The Owl King"

Baron begins her second chapter with an overview of the alchemical concepts Balzac was exposed to, in writings dating from the Middle Ages, but often reexamined in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries.

Baron, Anne-Marie. Balzac occulte: Alchimie, magnetisme, societes secretes