Alembics

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of laboratory apparatus used for distillation, consisting of two vessels with a connecting tube, typically for separating substances from liquids
2. Instruments employed in the process of distillation that facilitate the purification or separation of liquids through evaporation and condensation
3. Specialized equipment used in chemistry for distilling substances, wherein vapors are collected from a boiling solution and condensed back into liquid form

Etymology: "Alembics" is simply the plural of "alembic," a distilling vessel whose name traces a winding route from ancient Greece through the Arabic-speaking world into Europe. The Greek original, "ámbix," meant a cup or the cap that sat over a cooking pot, the part that caught rising vapour. That Greek word passed into Arabic as "al-inbīq," with the Arabic definite article "al-" attached, and medieval Latin writers then borrowed it as "alembīcus." From Latin it reached French as "alambic," and English took it from there. The name stayed attached to the apparatus itself, the glass or copper still that heated a liquid and collected its condensed vapour, even after the original idea of a simple cap had faded from view. The word is a doublet of "ambix" and "lambic," meaning that these are separate English words descended from the same Greek source by different routes, and "lambic" survives today as the name of a Belgian beer.