alembic
/əˈlɛm.bɪk/
alembic noun: an early chemical apparatus, consisting of two retorts connected by a tube, used to purify substances by distillation.
Noun
alembic (plural alembics)
- An early chemical apparatus, consisting of two retorts connected by a tube, used to purify substances by distillation.
- 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.1818, Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, chapter 11
- Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man.1836, Emerson, Nature, Chapter 3
alembic meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Kannada and Persian
alembic in Tamil
- பழங்கால வடிகலம்
alembic in Bengali
- প্রাচীন পাতন যন্ত্র, ডিস্টিলেশন পাত্র
alembic in Kannada
- ಬಟ್ಟಿಬುರುಡೆ
alembic in Persian
- chemical apparatus
- انبیق anbiq, anbiq, انبک anbek, دمبند dam-band, خنب xonb
Examples of alembic in a sentence
- To him animals were alembics and electric batteries; mechanics, physics, and chemistry could account for all their manifestations.1886, Joseph Rémi Léopold Delbœuf, What May Animals Be Taught?:
- We of all magical precipitates out of Europe’s groaning, clouded alembic, we are the thinnest, the most dangerous, the handiest to secular uses —1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:
Forms of alembic
| plural | alembics |
|---|---|
| alternative form (obsolete) | alembick |
| alternative form (obsolete) | limbeck |
Origin of alembic
From French alambic, from Medieval Latin alembīcus, from Arabic الإِنْبِيق (al-ʔinbīq), from Ancient Greek ἄμβιξ (ámbix, “cup, cap of a still”). Doublet of ambix and lambic.
Words formed from alembic
Questions about alembic
- What does alembic mean?
- Alembic means an early chemical apparatus, consisting of two retorts connected by a tube, used to purify substances by distillation.
- What is alembic in Tamil?
- Alembic in Tamil is பழங்கால வடிகலம். See Alembic meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use alembic in a sentence?
- To him animals were alembics and electric batteries; mechanics, physics, and chemistry could account for all their manifestations.
- What part of speech is alembic?
- Alembic is a noun.
- How do you pronounce alembic?
- Alembic is pronounced /əˈlɛm.bɪk/.
- What is the plural of alembic?
- The plural of alembic is alembics.
Words near alembic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alembic (page history and authors); alembic (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); alembic (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); alembic (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-alembic.wav.
Cite this entry: “alembic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alembic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.