Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Alembic
A-lem′bic
(ȧ-lĕm′bĭk)
, Noun.
[F.
alambic
(cf. Sp. alambique
), Ar. al-anbīq
, fr. Gr. ἄμβιξ
cup, cap of a still. The cap or head was the alembic
proper. Cf. Limbec
.] An apparatus formerly used in distillation, usually made of glass or metal. It has mostly given place to the retort and worm still.
Used also metaphorically.
The
alembic
of a great poet’s imagination. Brimley.
Webster 1828 Edition
Alembic
ALEM'BIC
, n.A chimical vessel used in distillation; usually made of glass or copper. The bottom part containing the liquor to be distilled, is called the cucurbit; the upper part which receives and condenses the stream, is called the head, the beak of which is fitted to the neck of a receiver. The head is more properly the alembic. This vessel is not so generally used now, as the worm still and retort.
Definition 2024
alembic
alembic
English
An alembic
Alternative forms
Noun
alembic (plural alembics)
- An early chemical apparatus, consisting of two retorts connected by a tube, used to purify substances by distillation
- 1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, chapter 11
- Ideal beauty is not the mind’s creation: it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind’s alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature.
- 1836, Emerson, Nature, Chapter 3
- Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man.
- 1886, Joseph Rémi Léopold Delboeuf, What May Animals Be Taught?
- The great physiologist Schwann, for instance, who died in 1882, maintained that there was an insurmountable barrier between us and those whom Michelet calls our inferior brethren. To him animals were alembics and electric batteries ; mechanics, physics, and chemistry could account for all their manifestations.
- 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:
- We of all magical precipitates out of Europe’s groaning, clouded alembic, we are the thinnest, the most dangerous, the handiest to secular uses —
- 1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, chapter 11
Meronyms
- (bell-shaped upper part): campane
Translations
chemical apparatus