transmutation
noun
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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 transmutation in a Sentence
Alex Abad-Santos, Vox, 18 Nov. 2024
In any case, whether by accident or by design, the transmutation of a vulgar old Jewface number into a civic hymn is hard to resist as metaphor—an emblem of minstrelsy’s fugitive movement through American life.
—Jody Rosen, The New Yorker, 7 Oct. 2023
A little less than a decade later, Gao recognized the same transmutation in Maslany’s She-Hulk audition.
—ELLE, 17 Aug. 2022
One of the most famous stories of nuclear transmutation comes from the 1970s, when nuclear chemist and Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg worked at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory alongside colleague Walt Loveland and then-graduate student Dave Morrissey.
—Connor Lynch, Discover Magazine, 19 Oct. 2021
See all Example Sentences for transmutation 
Dictionary Entries Near transmutation
Cite this Entry
“Transmutation.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transmutation. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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