alembic

English

An alembic

Alternative forms

• alembick (obsolete)
• limbeck

Etymology

From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] French alambic, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Medieval Latin alembicus, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Arabic الإِنْبِيق (al-ʔinbīq, “still”), from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Ancient Greek ἄμβιξ (ámbix, “cup, cap of a still”).

Pronunciation

• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) IPA^(key): /əˈlɛmbɪk/

Noun

alembic (plural alembics)

1. 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.

Meronyms

• (bell-shaped upper part): campane

Translations

chemical apparatus

• Catalan: alambí
• Czech: alembik m
• Dutch: alambiek
• French: alambic (fr) m
• Galician: alambique (gl) m
• German: Alambic (de) m, Destillierkolben (de) m
• Greek: άμβικας (el) m (ámvikas)

  Ancient: ἄμβιξ m (ámbix), ἄμβυξ m (ámbux), ἄμβικος m (ámbikos)

• Ido: alambiko (io)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Irish: ailimic m
• Italian: alambicco (it) m
• Polish: alembik (pl) m
• Portuguese: alambique (pt) m
• Romanian: alambic (ro) n
• Russian: дистилля́тор (ru) m (distilljátor), перего́нный куб m (peregónnyj kub)
• Spanish: alambique (es)
• Turkish: imbik (tr)

Anagrams

• cembali, lab mice