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Alchemist

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(pronounced al-kuh-mist)  adjective

Definition

from the noun alchemy.

Alchemy (pronounced al-kuh-mee) = 1. a medieval form of chemistry and speculative philosophy having as its primary aims the conversion of base metals into gold and the discovery of an elixir of eternal youth. 2. a seemingly magical power or process of changing something ordinary into something special or very valuable. 3. an unexplainable, mystifying, or miraculous transmuting.

Other Forms

Alchemize (pronounced al-kuh-myz) verb [Definition: to transform or create by alchemy; transmute.]

Main Example

• Why do most people love to watch movies? Arthur Hiller, then president of the Motion Picture Academy, put it best when he said, “What makes films the transcendent medium of expression is the alchemy of collaboration.”

Workplace Examples

• Since this is the first time your group will be organizing our annual conference, I suggest you start planning for it right away. Just remember: A really successful conference, one in which everything runs like clockwork, will not come about by some magic or alchemy!
• I’m a perfect example of someone who was once a couch potato and who has now turned into a health and fitness nut, having alchemized my fear of falling ill into a firm determination.

Other Examples

• speaking about his late mother, this author saying: “Another of her special talents lay in the making of confections that were unrivaled in taste even though she claimed to use the same ingredients as everybody else. They were so utterly delicious that I often described them as ‘food of the gods’ and sometimes referred to her as ‘Mom the alchemist.’”
• on being asked if he can turn around the company’s ailing chemical unit within the next year, the new CEO saying: “I am confident about making it profitable, but this won’t happen before 2015. Remember, I’m not an alchemist!”
• the alchemists at Enron and WorldCom who resorted to all kinds of accounting gimmickry to produce financial reports that showed their corporations to be hugely profitable when, in fact, that was far from the reality
• in an appearance on “PBS Newshour,” Columbia Professor Klaus Lackner--a pioneer of the emerging “direct air capture of CO₂” industry--speaking passionately about how his “commercially viable” technology can literally suck out all the surplus carbon dioxide that has been pumped into the earth’s atmosphere during the past 150 years, and thus alchemize the earth’s atmosphere into that which existed at the dawn of the industrial revolution

© 2014 V.J. Singal
No part of this may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.

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