Alchemy
/ˈælkəmi/noun
The medieval pursuit of transmuting base metals into gold and finding an elixir of life.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the pouring and alloying art”
The story of the word
The al- is Arabic, the definite article, carried along when al-kīmiyā' passed into Medieval Latin as alchimia; English later stripped it off again to make chemistry, so the two words are one word with and without its Arabic the. Where the Greek came from is genuinely disputed: some trace it to χέω, to pour or cast metal, others to Khem, the Egyptian name for the black soil of the Nile, which would make it the black art in a strictly geological sense. Newton wrote more on alchemy than on physics.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Arabic → Medieval Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Whatever the sound engineer did to that recording was closer to alchemy than mixing.