Chapter Ad vitam aut culpam to Adept of A by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Addle is the Old English adela (filth), hence rotten, putrid, worthless.

Addled egg, better "addle-egg," a worthless egg. An egg which has not the vital principle.

Addle-headed, addle-pate, empty headed. As an addle-egg produces no living bird, so an addle-pate lack brains.

Addle Parliament (The) - 5th April to 7th June, 1614. So called because it did not pass one single measure. (See Parliament.)

Adelantado A big-wig, the great boss of the place. It is a Spanish word for "his excellency" (adelantar , to excel), and is given to the governor of a province.

"Open no door. If the adelantado of Spain were here he should not enter." - Ben Jonson: Every Man out of his Humour, v. 4.

Ademar or Ademaro (in Jerusalem Delivered). Archbishop of Poggio, an ecclesiastical warrior, who with William, Archbishop of Orange, besought Pope Urban on his knees that he might be sent on the crusade. He took 400 armed men from Poggio, but they sneaked off during a drought, and left the crusade (Book xiii.). Ademar was not alive at the time, he had been slain at the attack on Antioch by Clorinda (Book xi.); but in the final attack on Jerusalem, his spirit came with three squadrons of angels to aid the besiegers (Book xviii.).

Adept properly means one who has attained (from the Latin, adeptus, participle of adipiscor). The alchemists applied the term vere adeptus, to those persons who professed to have "attained to the knowledge of" the elixir of life or of the philosopher's stone.

Alchemists tell us there are always 11 adepts, neither more nor less. Like the sacred chickens of Compostella, of which there are only 2 and always 2 - a cock and a hen.
In Rosicrucian lore as learn'd
As he that vere adeptus earn'd."
S. Butler: Hudibras.