Odyle

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A hypothetical life force or energy once believed to pervade living things and to cause phenomena such as glowing light near magnets and crystals
2. An unproven, 19th-century idea of a vital energy said to flow through humans, animals, plants and minerals, later dismissed by science
3. A speculative force proposed by Karl von Reichenbach that was thought to underlie magnetism, heat, light and the energy of living beings

Etymology: Odyle was coined in the 1840s by the German chemist Karl von Reichenbach, who claimed to have detected a faint glowing force streaming from magnets, crystals and living bodies. He named it after "od," a term he took from the Norse god Odin, and gave it a Greek-derived second half. Reichenbach's "od" was meant to be a universal, invisible energy, and odyle was the name he gave to the sensitivity people supposedly had to it. The second half comes from ancient Greek "hūlē," which meant "wood" or, more broadly, "material" or "substance," the raw stuff out of which things are made. Reichenbach's chosen word therefore promised a kind of primal matter-energy, though the force itself was never shown to exist. Scientists testing his claims in the following decades could not reproduce his observations, and the idea faded.

Synonyms: od, odic force