hermetic
adjective
made airtight by fusion or sealing.
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hermetic
American
[hur-met-ik]
/ hɜrˈmɛt ɪk /
Also
hermetical
adjective
-
made airtight by fusion or sealing.
-
not affected by outward influence or power; isolated.
-
(sometimes initial capital letter) of, relating to, or characteristic of occult science, especially alchemy.
-
(initial capital letter) of or relating to Hermes Trismegistus or the writings ascribed to him.
Hermetic
1
British
/ hɜːˈmɛtɪk /
adjective
-
of or relating to Hermes Trismegistus or the writings and teachings ascribed to him
-
of or relating to ancient science, esp alchemy
-
esoteric or recondite
hermetic
2
British
/ hɜːˈmɛtɪk /
adjective
-
sealed so as to be airtight
-
hidden or protected from the outside world
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of hermetic
1630–40; < Medieval Latin hermēticus of, pertaining to Hermes Trismegistus, equivalent to Latin Hermē ( s ) Hermes + -ticus -tic
Explanation
If you want to keep cookies crisp for a long time, store them in a jar with a hermetic, or airtight, seal. Hermetic means sealed so that no air can get in. The word can be used metaphorically as well. A child who is completely protected from the outside world might be said to come from a hermetic environment. The word comes from the name of the Greek god, Hermes Trismegistus, who was a magician and alchemist and was credited with creating the process for making a completely airtight glass tube, a god-like feat if there ever was one.
Vocabulary lists containing hermetic
100 SAT Words Beginning with "H"
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30 GRE Words Beginning with "G" and "H"
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"Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began" by Art Spiegelman
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The country had enjoyed a decade-long democratic experiment after a history of hermetic military rule.
From Barron's ● Dec. 21, 2025
MIT is an enclave even within the hermetic world of Cambridge academia—a place where complex, bleeding-edge ideas spawn from sterile labs and filthy dorm rooms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 22, 2025
Previous generations didn’t have the chance to taste some version of the hermetic bliss millions of us were exposed to over the past five years.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2025
A femtosecond laser uses a short pulse of infrared light that melts the glass together to form a strong, hermetic seal.
From Science Daily ● May 2, 2024
I felt the warm tug of the past and the melancholy of absence—all of it a little jarring, accustomed as I was to the hermetic and youthful world of college.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
He read about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the 19th-century occult group that counted Crowley, W.B.
From New York Times ● Sep. 26, 2018
On top of the history of jewelry, he has studied alchemy, the Hermetic sciences, and medieval astrology.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 7, 2016
Though her fellow historians view Yates’ 1964 book Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition as her greatest achievement, it is Yates’ book on memory that has proved to be her most popular work by far.
From Slate ● Nov. 23, 2015
Nonetheless, it does locate some legitimate and poignant correspondences between modern positive thinking and ancient Hermetic philosophy.
From Time ● Oct. 24, 2013
The Hermetic literature also contains doctrine of a markedly Johannine type, as notably in a prayer to Isis: ‘Glorify me, as I have glorified the name of thy son Horus.’
From The Legacy of Greece Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield by Livingstone, R.W.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
