a. [ad. Gr. σοφικός, f. σοφία wisdom, σοφός wise.]
† 1. Obtained by some secret process. Obs.
1709. True Light of Alchemy (heading), The Method and Materials … composing the Sophick Mercury and Transmuting Elixir.
2. Conveying, or full of, wisdom; learned.
a. 1773. J. Cunningham, On Death Geo. II., xxiv. Poems (1810), 461. He’ll drop the sword, or shut the sophic page And pensive pay the tributary tear.
3. Pertaining to knowledge or speculation.
1898. J. W. Powell, 19th Ann. Rep. Bureau Amer. Ethnol., p. xlv. The sophic activities so highly developed among the tribes of the arid pueblo region.
So Sophical a.; Sophically adv.
1601. Dolman, La Primaud. Fr. Acad., III. 66. It is most certaine, that that which … is in those [regions] aboue, is seene also in this [world] of farre woorse condition, and as it were of a bastard and sophicall nature.
1739. S. Harris, 53rd Ch. Isaiah, App. 256 (T.). So not all those Books which are called Sophical, such as the Wisdom of Sirach, &c. tend to teach the Jews [etc.].
1888. (title), Thesaurus Incantatus. The Enchanted Treasure; or, the Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita, in which is sophically and mystagorically declared The First Matter of the Stone.
