acid test

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When Fowler was preparing the first edition of Modern English Usage, he remarked that acid test was undoubtedly the popularized technical term 'most in vogue at the moment of writing (1920)'. In scientific use it meant the use of nitric acid to test for gold; in transferred use (typically as the acid test) it had acquired the broad sense 'a critical or conclusive test', a use that was popularized by Woodrow Wilson two years before Fowler was writing

(The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will—Times, 1918).

The term is also used with an

(Fallujah is an acid test for the way the US deals with entrenched military resistance—news transcript, Australian English 2004 [Old English (up to 1150)C])

and is occasionally qualified in some way

(It's a better time to put Kesey to the moral acid test—website, American English 2004 [Old English (up to 1150)C]).

For other extensions of technical terms see the table at popularized technicalities.

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The most severe test of reliability. Since gold resists acids that corrode other metals, the acid test was used for metals purporting to be gold.
See quick ratio.

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A decisive trial to determine worth or quality, as in Exposure to brilliant sunlight is the acid test for showing this fabric won't fade. Alluding to a 19th-century chemical test for distinguishing gold from other metals, this term was used figuratively by the early 1900s.

Some good "acid test" pages on the web: