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

[Medieval Latin alchahest, first used by Paracelsus (1493–1541), and said to have been coined by him in imitation of Arabic words .]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably coined by Paracelsus, as pseudo-Arabic.

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Examples

Comments

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  • JM got a litre of alkahest on eBay for a very good price.

    January 9, 2010

  • 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