antidote
Americannoun
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antidotes
plural
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a medicine or other remedy for counteracting the effects of poison, disease, etc.
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something that prevents or counteracts injurious or unwanted effects.
Good jobs are the best antidote to teenage crime.
verb (used with object)
noun
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med a drug or agent that counteracts or neutralizes the effects of a poison
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anything that counteracts or relieves a harmful or unwanted condition; remedy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of antidote
1400–50; late Middle English (< Middle French ) < Latin antidotum < Greek antídoton something given against (i.e., for counteracting), equivalent to anti- anti- + dotón neuter of dotós given, verbid of didónai to give; akin to datum
Compare meaning
How does antidote compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
An antidote is a remedy that relieves. So if you get headaches from long bus rides, it's best to travel equipped with the key pain alleviating antidotes: Tylenol, lots of water and soothing music. A noun that comes all the way to us from the ancient Greek word antidoton, which means “given as a remedy,” an antidote counteracts or relieves the negative effects of something. You can find antidotes to poison, anxiety, sadness or even a bad day. People tend to think of medicinal cures when they hear the word antidote, but things like meditation, sleep, green tea, exercise or a good hug can all have positive, antidotal affects.
Vocabulary lists containing antidote
Power Prefix: Anti
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Four Power Prefixes: anti-, con-, inter-, and uni-.
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Commonly Confused Words, List 1
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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 show promises to teach Americans how to eat “real food,” presenting recognizable ingredients and home cooking as an antidote to a processed-food culture portrayed as artificial, addictive and imposed from above.
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
Join us on a time-travel adventure to the ’90s: If you’ve recently been paralyzed by choice or felt overconnected but underinvested in your friendships, Slate has an antidote for you.
From Slate ● Aug. 10, 2026
With anti-intellectualism in comedy on the rise, he says his book club stands as an antidote to the manosphere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026
Violet Black, from Edinburgh, Scotland, thinks walking can be a good antidote to isolation and loneliness.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026
“Oh, you’re like your mother.... Well, I can’t fault you… A bezoar would certainly act as an antidote to all these potions!”
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
If despair is weighing you down, Miyazaki’s films and inheritors like “Avatar: The Last Airbender” are powerful antidotes.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
For the past five years, The Liana Trust has been studying venoms from species beyond the big four to develop antidotes to them.
From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2026
This consensus is one of the strongest antidotes to civil conflict.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 1, 2025
In this light, the numerous rumors that spread in the early days of the pandemic about its origins, impacts and potential antidotes are unsurprising.
From Seattle Times ● May 12, 2023
Staring nastily around at them all, he informed them that he would be testing them on poison antidotes during the last lesson of the term.
From "Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire" by J. K. Rowling
Poisons of an alkaline nature, such as lye, washing soda, ammonia, etc., are antidoted with vinegar or lemon juice, followed by soothing drinks or sweet oil.
From The Mother and Her Child by William S. Sadler
As civilization advances the tendency is for the average of life to lengthen, provided life does not grow so complex that knowledge is antidoted by too great artificiality.
From Maintaining Health Formerly Health and Efficiency by R. L. Alsaker
But hitherto your admirable character has antidoted the poison; the detractor is despised, and every one's indignation raised against him.
From Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 3 by Samuel Richardson
In this and some other respects Emerson is well antidoted by Carlyle, who lays the stress on the opposite qualities, and charges his hero to hold his tongue.
From Birds and Poets : with Other Papers by John Burroughs
And had it not been that they had very well antidoted their stomach, heart, and wine-pot, which is called the noddle, they had been altogether suffocated and choked with these detestable vapours.
From Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2 by Peter Anthony Motteux
Mrs. Bloomer replied to Mr. Floyd through the same paper, meeting and refuting every objection, thus in a measure antidoting the poisonous influence of the senator's pronunciamento.
From History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The mother is constantly antidoting and neutralizing the child's little troubles and discords by giving the opposite thought and applying the love-elixir.
From Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden
Hunters, warriors, and lovers have occasion to call upon him, and sometimes antidoting charms are sought, when the evil effects of an enemy’s work are to be counteracted.
From The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 143-300 by Walter James Hoffman
Ordinary quick-lime, or even plaster from the walls of the house, may be stirred up in water and administered to the sufferer, as both have a distinct value in antidoting the effects of this poison.
From Health on the Farm A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene by H. F. (Henry Fauntleroy) Harris
It is no anti-psoric, nor is it capable of antidoting the three miasms, or of inflicting medicinal diseases for life.
From Apis Mellifica or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent by C. W. Wolf
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.
