Alembic
//əˈlɛm.bɪk// noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 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."
- 2 an obsolete kind of container used for distillation; two retorts connected by a tube wordnet
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
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.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.