hermetic

English

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hermetic

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• Hermetic
• hermetical
• hermetick (obsolete)

Etymology

From Medieval Latin hermeticus, irregular derivation of Hermes Trismegistus, the god and mythological alchemist, said to possess a magic ability to seal treasure chests so that nothing could access their contents.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /hə(ɹ)ˈmɛtɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛtɪk

Adjective

hermetic (comparative more hermetic, superlative most hermetic)

1. (chiefly capitalized, Greek mythology) Pertaining to ancient Greek Olympian God Hermes
2. (chiefly capitalized) Pertaining to Hermes Trismegistus or the writings attributed to him.
3. (chiefly capitalized) One who follows/worships Hermes.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 16:

     "As above, so below" is an axiom from Hermetic mysticism, and in this Hermetic vision of physiology the tongue is connected through the spinal column to the penis.

4. Pertaining to alchemy or occult practices; magical, alchemical.
   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic:

     Newton subscribed to the hermetic notion that the true knowledge of the universe had been earlier revealed by God to the ancients, the prisci theologi.

5. Hermetically sealed.
6. Isolated, away from outside influence.
   • 2010, Paul Bowman, Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-fantasy-fighting-philosophy, →ISBN, page 106:

     In other words, it is a mistake to regard this or any film text 'as if it were merely hermetic', or an isolated island.

   • 2013, Martin S. Alexander, “Fighting to the last Frenchman”, in Joel Blatt, editor, The French Defeat Of 1940: Reassessments, →ISBN, page 325:

     Increasingly isolated in the military's hermetic world, as winter stretched endlessly onward, Gamelin was finally overcome by an insidious complacency in the adequacy of his fellow generals, their British counterparts and his own troops.

   • 2002, Sebastiaan Faber, Exile and Cultural Hegemony: Spanish Intellectuals in Mexico, 1939-1975, →ISBN, page 167:

     This meant, in the first place, reestablishing an intellectual contact which, given tight Francoist censorship and Spain's almost hermetic isolation from the outside world during the 1940s, had been practically nonexistent.

   • 1996, Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics : English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture, →ISBN, page 85:

     In its early days, progressive rock drew on the hermetic streak of psychedelia, the supposition that music should contain hidden meanings which insiders would be aware of, but outsiders would be oblivious to.

   • 2006, Daniel Solomon, Global City Blues, →ISBN, page 6:

     The spirit that roots Professor Wu, that endows him with his quiet serenity and his recent influence, is the inverse of the spirit that has been celebrated, lionized, and rewarded in the hermetic, self-perpetuating culture of the architectural world for most of the last seventy-five years.

   • 2011, Vivian Sobchack, “When the ear dreams”, in Jacques Khalip, Robert Mitchell, editors, Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, →ISBN, page 130:

     Thus, in concert with the privatization, intensification, and amplification of digitized sound, the digitized imagery renders not only the immensity, intimacy, and heightened detail of reverie but also the surrounding vagueness of its internalized and hermetic space.

   • 2016, Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, Strata R. Chalup, The Practice of System and Network Administration‎, 3rd edition, volume 1, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN:

     A hermetic build is a build process that has zero untracked dependencies. A hermetic build system should be able to reproduce the exact same package, bit-for-bit (except timestamps), for any past software release.

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “hermetic”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Romanian

Adjective

hermetic m or n (feminine singular hermetică, masculine plural hermetici, feminine and neuter plural hermetice)

1. Obsolete form of ermetic.

Declension

References

• hermetic in Academia Română, Micul dicționar academic, ediția a II-a, Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic, 2010. →ISBN