2021 Speaking Tuesday at the APOS India conference, Nair described the strategy as a akin to being an alchemist. George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Dec. 2022 Smith, leading a band that also features Puerto Rican saxophone dynamo Miguel Zenon, is a skilled aural alchemist. 2022 To better understand this, think of a fairy-tale kingdom where the royal alchemist succeeded in turning lead into gold, and the delighted king ordered the royal mint to smelt more coins with it. 2022 The film follows a young woman named Recent, an alchemist who belongs to a band of grifters called the Famlee, who travel the countryside cheating peasants out of their land. Grooming Playbook, The Salt Lake Tribune, Leaders of Transformation Are Shape-Shifters Imagine Zelensky as an alchemist, changing form in plain sight.Įrica Ariel Fox, Forbes, 19 Mar. Randall Colburn, EW.com, Accentuate its already alluring scent by layering with perfumed oils from the same line and allow yourself to truly embrace the alchemist within. Recent Examples on the Web Directed by genre alchemist Bong Joon Ho, who would revisit similar themes a few years later with the Academy Award-winning Parasite, the film melds action with horror, humor, and a healthy dose of queasy drama. This power to transform things for the better, real or imagined, led to figurative meanings for alchemy and alchemist. Some other words derived from Arabic also retain the al- in English, such as algebra, algorithm, and alcohol in fact, the transformative liquid that was constantly being sought through experimentation by alchemists is another word with the Arabic al- prefix: elixir.

The word then passed from Latin to French before coming to English.

The long route to English for alchemist began with the Greek word chēmeia, which probably came from the word chyma (“fluid”), derived from the verb chein, meaning “to pour.” It then passed to Arabic, which added its definite article al- (“the”) to the Greek root. Their secretive experiments, usually involving heat and the mixing of liquids, led to the development of pharmacology and the rise of modern chemistry. Alchemists believed that lead could be “perfected” into gold, that diseases could be cured, and that life could be prolonged through transmutation, or a change of some essential element into a superior form. Today we recognize alchemy as a pseudoscience, and give chemistry its rightful place as a serious scientific field, but the two terms initially overlapped in meaning before separating by the 17th century, just as astrology and astronomy did during the same period.Īlchemy and alchemist are in fact older words than chemistry and chemist in English. Alchemist: Someone Who Transforms Things for the Better

Alchemistry game