Contents

English

Etymology

From Mediaeval Latin elixir, from Arabic الإكسير (al-’iksīr), from Ancient Greek ξήριον (“‘medicinal powder’”), from ξηρός (“‘dry’”).

Pronunciation

Noun

Singular elixir

Plural elixirs

elixir (plural elixirs)

  1. (alchemy) A liquid which converts lead to gold.
    • 2002, Philip Ball, The Elements: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2004, p. 59:
      For Chinese alchemists, gold held the key to the Elixir, the Eastern equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone.
  2. A liquid which is believed to cure all ills and gives eternal life.
  3. (pharmacy) A sweet flavored liquid (usually containing a small amount of alcohol) used in compounding medicines to be taken by mouth in order to mask an unpleasant taste.

Derived terms

 

The above information uses material from Wiktionary and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Sun Nov 22 18:39:13 2009. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.