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Acid test
Definitions
- 1 A test involving the reaction of an acid with another chemical.
- 2 a rigorous or crucial appraisal wordnet
- 3 A rigorous test or appraisal of the quality or worth of something. figuratively
"[H]e reflected that few professional beauties could have stood, as this woman did, the acid test of that mercilessly brilliant morning."
- 4 In the 1960s, a party based around the use and advocacy of the psychedelic drug LSD (known in slang as acid). broadly, historical
"The Pranksters had just held an Acid Test at the Fillmore Auditorium, a big ballroom in the middle of one of San Francisco's big Negro slums, the Fillmore district. It was a wild night. Hundreds of heads and bohos from all over the Bay area turned out, zonked to the eyeballs."
Etymology
From acid + test; sense 1 (“test involving the reaction of an acid with another chemical”) and sense 2 (“rigorous test or appraisal of the quality or worth of something”) refer to the use of nitric acid to test if a metal is gold; true gold is not affected by the acid. Sense 3 (“party based around the use and advocacy of the psychedelic drug LSD”) is a pun referencing the slang term acid (“LSD”). The original “acid test” parties were thrown by the Merry Pranksters group between 1965 and 1966 and advertised by the slogan “Can you pass the acid test?”
See also for "acid test"
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