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
Jeremy Schifeling, Contributor, CNBC, 13 Jan. 2025
But the real crucible for the mayor is only just beginning to take shape, with her political prospects inextricably tied to the almost unfathomably knotty recovery ahead.
—Julia Wick, Los Angeles Times, 13 Jan. 2025
Looking Beyond Management for Gen Z For Gen Z, the workplace of 2025 is a crucible of opportunity and challenge - with more of the latter inhibiting the former.
—Chris Westfall, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2025
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.
—John Berger, Harper's Magazine, 2 Nov. 2024
See all Example Sentences for crucible 
Dictionary Entries Near crucible
Cite this Entry
“Crucible.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crucible. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.
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crucible
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