crucible
noun
Tom Wolfe
Did you know?
Unless you’re studying Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in school, it may not be crucial to learn the story behind crucible, but it can’t hurt! Crucible looks like it should be closely related to the Latin combining form cruc- (“cross”); however, unlike crucial, it isn’t. It was forged instead from the Medieval Latin crucibulum, a noun for an earthen pot used to melt metals, and in English it first referred to a vessel made of a very heat-resistant material (such as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high degree of heat. It’s possible that the resemblance between cruc- and crucible encouraged people to start using crucible to mean “a severe trial,” as that sense is synonymous with one meaning of cross, but the idea of simmering in a literal crucible also sounds plenty severe. The newest sense of crucible (“a situation in which great changes take place,” as in “forged in the crucible of war”) recalls the fire and heat required to transform some solids into liquids.
Examples of crucible in a Sentence
Sidharth Ramsinghaney, Forbes, 5 Nov. 2024
The notion that children’s lives are forged in a crucible of relentless résumé building is somewhat undermined by current surveys of how many of their waking hours are spent on gaming and social media.
—Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2024
And these glass vessels function like crucibles in the painting—that’s to say, what is put into them is transformed, and Manet needed that transformation.
—Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
Related How Hurricane Helene became a monster storm Spruce Pine has the only naturally occurring quartz that’s pure enough to serve as a crucible to melt polysilicon.
—Emma Roth, The Verge, 1 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Crucible.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crucible. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
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