It's the Word of the Day podcast for December 3rd.
Today's word is alchemy, spelled A-L-C-H-E-M-Y.
Alchemy is a noun.
It refers to a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Rolling Stone by Christopher Cruz.
40 years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System hit North American shores,
single-handedly resurrecting the video game market after its infamous post-Atari crash in 1983.
To do so, it needed a heavy hitter,
a killer must-have title that could put butts in seats and lock audiences into the tube TV until their eyes bleed.
That game was Super Mario Brothers, a product so potent its exact alchemy has never been recreated.
Alchemy,
the medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy that focused on the attempt to change less valuable metals into gold,
to find a universal cure for disease,
and to discover a means of prolonging life indefinitely,
was practiced in much of the ancient world from China and India to Greece.
Alchemy, as practiced in ancient Egypt,
was later revived in 12th century Europe through translations of Arabic texts into Latin,
which led to the development of pharmacology and to the rise of modern chemistry.
The word alchemy was first used in English in the 1400s, and by the mid-1500s,
it had developed figurative senses relating to powers and processes that can change or transform things in mysterious or impressive ways.