A small, cup-shaped container made of bone ash or clay used in metallurgy to separate precious metals like gold and silver from other metals during refining.
From Old French 'coupe' (cup), from Latin 'cupa' (cask or tub). The diminutive form '-el' creates the sense of a small cup used in assay work.
Cupels are brilliant ancient chemistry—when you heat metals in a porous cupel, base metals oxidize and sink into the ash while gold and silver remain pure and gleaming, giving alchemists and assayers a way to separate dreams from reality.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.