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Alchemist: Someone Who Transforms Things for the Better
Today we recognize alchemy as a pseudoscience, and give chemistry its rightful place as a serious scientific field, but the two terms initially overlapped in meaning before separating by the 17th century, just as astrology and astronomy did during the same period.
Alchemy and alchemist are in fact older words than chemistry and chemist in English. Alchemists believed that lead could be “perfected” into gold, that diseases could be cured, and that life could be prolonged through transmutation, or a change of some essential element into a superior form. Their secretive experiments, usually involving heat and the mixing of liquids, led to the development of pharmacology and the rise of modern chemistry.
The long route to English for alchemist began with the Greek word chēmeia, which probably came from the word chyma (“fluid”), derived from the verb chein, meaning “to pour.” It then passed to Arabic, which added its definite article al- (“the”) to the Greek root. The word then passed from Latin to French before coming to English. Some other words derived from Arabic also retain the al- in English, such as algebra, algorithm, and alcohol; in fact, the transformative liquid that was constantly being sought through experimentation by alchemists is another word with the Arabic al- prefix: elixir.
This power to transform things for the better, real or imagined, led to figurative meanings for alchemy and alchemist.
Examples of alchemist in a Sentence
Alissa Fitzgerald, Forbes.com, 11 Apr. 2025
Their Paris outpost is like a walk back in time to a high-level alchemist from the turn of the 19th century.
—Tanya Akim, Forbes, 21 Mar. 2025
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Medieval alchemists sought to literally turn non-valuable substances into gold.
—Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 20 Mar. 2025
My dreams were of being an alchemist, someone in a workshop of beautiful metal and tools sculpting things that were visceral and come with meaning.
—A.d. Amorosi, Variety, 31 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Alchemist.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alchemist. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.
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