Other forms: crucibles
A crucible is a small pot for melting things at high heat. A clay crucible, pour from the crucible, a crucible furnace.
It must survive temperatures that destroy the metal's own container, so it is made of clay, graphite or ceramic. Figuratively a crucible is a place of severe testing, and the Crucible in Sheffield gave its name to a theatre and the snooker played in it.
1nouncrucibleA small pot for melting things at high heat.
“The metal was melted in a crucible and then poured into a mould.”
crucible is a container.
Medieval Latin crucibulum names a melting pot, apparently connected with crux, a cross.
Latin
crucibulum — night-lamp, metallurgic melting-pot
English, today
crucible
Built from
From Latin crucibulum (“night-lamp, metallurgic melting-pot”), apparently a derivative of crux (“cross”), perhaps by analogy to thūribulum (“censer”) and suffix -bulum, or from crucio (“to torment”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA