alcippid (alsipid)

[ and to E. gush. Alchemy would thus be origi- Alcippe is the typical genus. nally the art of extracting juices from plants for medicinal purposes.] 1. Medieval chemistry; the doctrines and proce es of the early and medieval chemists; in particular, the supposed proce , or the search for the proce , by which it was hoped to transmute the baser metals into gold. Alchemy was, we may say, the sickly but imaginative in fancy through which modern chemistry had to pa before Encyc . Brit ., I. 459. it attained its majority, or, in other words, became a positive science. 2. Any magical or mysterious power or proce of transmuting or transforming. Go laugh, che my of smiles. transmuting imps into angels by the al Alcott, Tablets, p. 64. In the tiny cellulose sac, by the vegetable protoplasm is wrought the very alchemy of life. S. B. Herrick, Plant Life, p. 21. 3. Formerly, a mixed metal used for utensils, a modification of bra : so called because believed to have been originally formed by the art of alchemy; hence, an imitation, as alchemy supposed to be of bra : used figuratively was by Milton for a trumpet. tury B. C., celebrated for his amatory verses. tic, or series of three dactyls or spondees (the third foot regularly a dactyl), followed by a spondee or trochee. A couplet consisting of a hexameter followed by such aline is called an Alcmanian distich, and this may be used sin Alcmanian verse or line, a dactylic tetrameter catalec gle or double as an A leman i an strophe or stanza alco (al'kō), n. [Native name.] A variety of small dog, with a small head and large pendulous ears, found wild in Mexico and Peru, and now domesticated.