hermetic

• hermetical
• hermetick (obsolete)

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.

• IPA^(key): /hə(ɹ)ˈmɛtɪk/
• Rhymes: -ɛtɪk

hermetic (comparative more hermetic, superlative most hermetic)

1. (chiefly with capital initial) Pertaining to Hermes Trismegistus or the writings attributed to him.
2. 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.

3. Hermetically sealed.
4. 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 (ed), The French Defeat Of 1940: Reassessments, page 325, →ISBN.

     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 and Robert Mitchell (eds), Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, page 130, →ISBN.

     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.

5. Misspelling of hermitic.

• “hermetic” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.