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Crucible

//ˈkɹuː.sɪ.bəl// noun

Definitions

Noun

1
A cup-shaped piece of laboratory equipment used to contain chemical compounds when heating them to very high temperatures.
"In one corner of the closet was a very small furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicate crucible—two crucibles connected by a tube. One of these crucibles was nearly full of lead in a state of fusion, but not reaching up to the aperture of the tube, which was close to the brim."
2
a vessel made of material that does not melt easily; used for high temperature chemical reactions wordnet
3
A heat-resistant container in which metals are melted, usually at temperatures above 500°C, commonly made of graphite with clay as a binder.
4
The bottom and hottest part of a blast furnace; the hearth.
5
A very difficult and trying experience, that acts as a refining or hardening process. figuratively
"But, in considering an author and his works as one, a sufficient distinction is not drawn between the ideal and the real: the last is only given by being past through the crucible of the first."

Etymology

From Latin crucibulum (“night-lamp, metallurgic melting-pot”), apparently a derivative of crux (“cross”), perhaps by analogy to thūribulum (“censer”) and suffix -bulum, or from crucio (“to torment”).

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