The word "crucible" is correct and usable in written English.
It is a noun that refers to a vessel used for melting and refining metals. For example, you could say, "The crucible held the molten gold which was shaped into a necklace".
Then, at 21, Carlyle chanced upon a copy of The Crucible, Arthur Miller's classic tale of witchcraft, Macarthyism, public hysteria, and personal integrity.
Back then though, the straight-talking painter-decorator dismissed the acting world as 'pish', so it was a small miracle that he bothered to pick up The Crucible at all.
The crucible, as usual in Republican races, is shaping up as South Carolina, conservative like Iowa, only nastier, an awkward race for Romney.
Historically, Oakland is a crucible of black empowerment and left-wing activism.
Her dark blue dress with that mimsyish white Peter Pan collar made her look a little bit schoolgirlish, a little bit Amish and a lot – as Private Eye's brilliant cover last week emphasised – like a character in The Crucible.
Modern English identity (and, in more complex ways, a later British identity) was tempered in the crucible of embattled Protestantism.
When, working for the Guardian, I saw Arthur Miller in New York, all that he had to say about The Crucible related to the pursuit and prosecution of "un-American activities" inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
"That commitment sustained us in the crucible of a horrible civil war in this country".
Let England Shake unsentimentally engages with the aspect of our history that is repeatedly ignored in popular discussions of Englishness, which has had the greatest impact on our sense of who we are: the crucible of war.
Interestingly, in his autobiography, Miller writes of The Crucible that 'a drama cannot merely describe an emotion, it has to become an emotion', which pretty much sums up Carlyle's philosophy.
I tried to turn our first conversation towards the subject of personal betrayal - a habit that, on the evidence of The Crucible, swept through 17th-century Salem like a contagion.
