arch. Forms: 4 lambyke, 5–6 lembike, -byke, 6 lembyck, -beck, lymbeke, 6–7 lim-, lymbeck(e, -bique, 7 limbek, -bic(ke, 6–9 limbec(k. [aphetized f. ALEMBIC.] = ALEMBIC.
c. 1350. Med. MS., in Archæologia, XXX. 409. Lambyke.
1460–70. Bk. Quintessence, 11. Þanne putte it in a lembike and distille it at a good fier.
1529. Test. Ebor. (Surtees), V. 277. A lymbeke for stilling of watters.
a. 1599. Spenser, F. Q., VII. vii. 31. The dull drops, that from his purpled bill, As from a limbeck, did adown distill.
1667. Milton, P. L., III. 605. Draind through a Limbec to his Native forme.
1667. Dryden, Secr. Love, I. iii. I feel my Strength each Day and Hour consume, Like Lillies wasting in a Lymbeck’s Heat.
1713. Pope, Guardian, No. 92, ¶ 4. Like a limbeck that gives you, drop by drop, an extract of the simples in it.
1829. Carlyle, Misc. (1857), I. 277. Let the distiller pass it and repass it through his limbecs.
Comb. 1650. Fuller, Pisgah, IV. i. 16. An engine, which limbecklike extracted sweet water out of the brackish Ocean.
b. fig.
1593. Lodge, Phillis (1875), 54. My loue doth serue for fire, my hart the fornace is, The aperries of my sighes augment the burning flame, The Limbique is mine eye that doth distill the same.
1598. Tofte, Alba (1880), 3. What my sad eye Distils from Lymbeck of a bleeding Hart.
1605. Shaks., Macb. I. vii. 67. That Memorie, the Warder of the Braine, Shall be a Fume, and the Receit of Reason A Lymbeck onely.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Duct. Dubit., II. iii. rule xiv. § 29 (1676), 372. The remaining part [of the books of the Fathers] have passed through the limbecks and strainers of Hereticks [etc.].
1840. Hood, Miss Kilmansegg, Her Misery, ix. The waters that down her visage rilled Were drops of unrectified spirit distilled From the Limbeck of Pride and Vanity.
1887. Athenæum, 20 Aug., 243/2. There are [in the translation] French forms of expression … which ought to have been passed through the limbeck.
