elixir

1. 1.

   a sweet flavored liquid (usually containing a small amount of alcohol) used in compounding medicines to be taken by mouth in order to mask an unpleasant taste

   Broaderliquid
2. 2.

   hypothetical substance that the alchemists believed to be capable of changing base metals into gold

   Synonymsphilosopher's stonephilosophers' stone

   Broadersubstance
3. 3.

   a substance believed to cure all ills

   Broaderpotionpanacea

   Narrowerelixir of life

Other forms of elixir

plural

elixirs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about elixir

What does elixir mean?

elixir means "a sweet flavored liquid (usually containing a small amount of alcohol) used in compounding medicines to be taken by mouth in order to mask an unpleasant taste". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in elixir?

elixir has 3 syllables: e-lix-ir. The stress falls on "lix". In IPA it is /ɪˈlɪksɚ/.

What is another word for elixir?

Close synonyms include philosopher's stone, philosophers' stone. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is elixir a common word?

elixir is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.