Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The hypothetical universal solvent once sought by alchemists.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The pretended universal solvent or menstruum of the alchemists. Also spelled
alcahest .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The fabled “universal solvent” of the alchemists; a menstruum capable of dissolving all bodies.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun the universal solvent sought by the
alchemists
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun hypothetical universal solvent once sought by alchemists
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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February 24th, 2005 at 12:07 pm alkahest, when I read your quote: “despite having armpit-length hair”, my first thought was “huh? armpit hair is short…”
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Nor shall I expatiate on the alkahest of that mad scoundrel, Paracelsus, with which he pretended to reduce flints into salt; nor archaeus or spiritus rector of that visionary Van Helmont, his simple, elementary water, his gas, ferments, and transmutations; nor shall
jmjarmstrong commented on the word alkahest
JM got a litre of alkahest on eBay for a very good price.
January 9, 2010
abigail commented on the word alkahest
Of course, the logical problem with this is that if it dissolves all bodies, you can't keep it in or near anything -- if it existed, it would by definition dissolve everything around it.
July 21, 2010