alchemy

Noun

alchemy (countable and uncountable, plural alchemies)

1. (uncountable) The premodern and early modern study of physical changes, particularly in Europe, Arabia, and China; and chiefly in pursuit of an elixir of immortality, a universal panacea, and/or a philosopher's stone able to transmute base metals into gold, eventually developing into chemistry.
   • And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Æsop makes the fable; that, when he died, told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried underground in his vineyard; and they digged over all the ground, and gold they found none; but by reason of...1605, Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, IV. (11)
   • There were also letters to scientists and other scholars, pages of derivations of mathematics and physics formulae, and copious writings on alchemy and religion. […] The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold...2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892, archived from the original on 09 Jan 2025
2. (countable) The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.
   • O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts:
     And that which would appear offence in us,
     His countenance, like richest alchemy,
     Will change to virtue and to worthiness.1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
   • No alchymy to saving.1640, George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum; or, Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, etc., in The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert, London: Pickering, 1841, p. 143
3. (countable, slang) Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.