| 释义 |
▪ I. quintessence, n.|kwɪnˈtɛsəns|
Also 5 -essencie, quyntencense, 6 quintaessence; Sc. quintessance, -iscence, quentassens, 7 -escense.
[a. F. quintessence, † quinte essence (14th c.), or ad. med.L. quinta essentia ‘fifth essence’.
Metrical quots. show that during the 16–18th c. the stress was usually on the first and third syllables (hence the abbrev. quint'ssence in Quarles), but quinˈtessence is found as early as 1597; both stressings occur in Milton's Par. Lost (iii. 716 and vii. 244).]
1. The ‘fifth essence’ of ancient and mediæval philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the heavenly bodies were composed, and to be actually latent in all things, the extraction of it by distillation or other methods being one of the great objects of alchemy.
c1430Lydg. Min. Poems (Percy Soc.) 51 Aurum potabile..In quyntencense, best restauracioun. 1460–70Bk. Quintessence 14 If ȝe putte seedis or flouris..into oure 5 essencie forsoþe sich 5 essence ȝe schulen haue þerfore. 1500–20Dunbar Poems xxxiii. 58 Me thocht sair fassonis he assailȝeit, To mak the quintessance, and failȝeit. 1561Eden Arte Nauig. i. iv, The quint essence or fyfte substaunce, is a body of it selfe. 1622Malynes Anc. Law-Merch. 256 This cannot bee done without proiection of the Elixar or Quintescense vpon mettalls. 1660tr. Paracelsus' Archidoxis i. iv. 35 The Quintessence therefore, is a certain matter Corporally extracted out of all things, which Nature hath produced. 1702tr. Le Clerc's Prim. Fathers 309 That the Soul was of the same Nature with Heaven or of the Quint-Essence which Heaven is made of. 1847Emerson Poems, Uriel, The young deities discussed..Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams. 1879Cassell's Techn. Educ. IV. 330/2 The vivifying quintessence of the elements of Raymond Lully.
2. The most essential part of any substance, extracted by natural or artificial processes; a highly refined essence or extract; spec. in older chemistry, an alcoholic tincture obtained by digestion at a gentle heat.
1576Baker (title) tr. Gesner's New Jewell of Health,..treating very amplye of all Dystillations of Waters, of Oyles, Balmes, Quintessences, etc. 1582J. Hester Secr. Phiorav. i. xvii. 18 Then vse our Quintaessence of Wine. 1671Salmon Syn. Med. iii. lxxv. 671 Quintessence of Vipers..is of wonderful virtue for purifying the blood, &c. 1709Addison Tatler No. 131 ⁋9, I looked upon that sooty Drug..as the Quintessence of English Bourdeaux. 1850Robertson Serm. Ser. iii. i. (1872) 3 In the drop of venom..there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison.
b. The most essential part or feature of some non-material thing; esp. the purest or most perfect form or manifestation of some quality.
1570R. Hichcock Quintess. Wit A ij, A naturall quint⁓essence of knowledge. 1611Coryat Crudities 29 Certayne artificiall rocks, most curiously contriued by the very quint⁓essence of art. 1649Milton Eikon. vi. 53 The Law of England, which Lawyers say is the quintessence of reason. 1759Franklin Ess. Wks. 1840 III. 408 The last period of the governor's message was the very quintessence of invective. 1879Farrar St. Paul II. 181 note, This passage contains the very quintessence of Pauline theology.
c. The most perfect embodiment of the typical qualities of a certain class of persons, etc.
1590R. Harvey Pl. Perc. 8 A Quintessence of all the picked yoouth. 1610Histrio-m. ii. 161 Heere's the very quintessence of Duckes. 1823Scott Fam. Lett. (1894) II. xix. 176 You have escaped the quintessence of bores. 1845James Arrah Neil ii, He was the quintessence of an ordinary-minded man.
▸ Astron. A form of dark energy that varies in time and space and has negative pressure, proposed to account for the apparent accelerating expansion of the universe as suggested by observations of some distant supernovae.
[1989L. M. Kraus Fifth Essence ix. 217 The prime particle physics candidates for dark matter are ‘honest’ ones—at least as honest as Anaximander's ‘indefinite’ or Aristotle's ‘quintessence’.] 1998P. J. Steinhardt & R. R. Caldwell in Astron. Soc. Pacific Conf. Ser. 15114 In this lecture, we introduce the possibility that the missing energy consists of ‘quintessence’: a time-dependent and spatially inhomogeneous component with negative pressure. The negative pressure means that this component has an equation-of-state different from that of baryons, neutrinos, dark matter, or radiation. We refer to this fifth component as ‘quintessence’. 1998Sci. Amer. Sept. 13/2 The QMAP results corroborate the prevailing theory of inflation—with the twist that the universe is only one third matter (both ordinary and dark) and two thirds ‘quintessence’, a bizarre form of energy, possibly inherent in empty space. 1999Nature 4 Mar. 25/2 Quintessence began as Einstein's cosmological constant, λ. It has negative gravitational mass: its gravity pushes things apart. 2001Sci. Amer. Jan. 43/1 Steinhard [sic] was one of the originators of the theory of inflation... He reintroduced the term ‘quintessence’ after his youngest son Will and daughter Cindy picked it out from several alternatives.
▪ II. quintessence, v. Now rare.
[f. prec. n. Cf. F. quintessencier (1611 in Cotgr.).]
trans. a. To extract the quintessence of. b. To take out of (something) as a quintessence.
1585Jas. I Ess. Poesie (Arb.) 25, I quint-essence the Poets soule. 1593Nashe Christ's T. (1613) 154 It is a kind of Alchimical quintessensing a heauen out of earth. 1638Drummond of Hawthornden Irene Wks. (1711) 170 For quintessencing and alembicking thee, and using thee, as alchymists do gold. 1844For. Q. Rev. XXXIII. 186 The science of the cook consists..in quintessencing (so to speak) the viands. |