elaterium

British  

/ ˌɛləˈtɪərɪəm /

noun

1. a greenish sediment prepared from the juice of the squirting cucumber, used as a purgative

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Etymology

Origin of elaterium

C16: from Latin, from Greek elatērion squirting cucumber, from elatērios purgative, from elaunein to drive

Example Sentences

Now may he invoke the virtues of the hellebores, the white and the black, now may he use elaterium.

From History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) Revised Edition by Draper, John William

It is due to the elaterium of spring.

From Of All Things by Benchley, Robert C.

I asked him how on earth it got there; but I could only learn that the woman was fifty-six inches round the waist, and that he had treated her with elaterium.

From The Stark Munro Letters by Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir

The chief vegetable purgatives are aloes, colocynth, gamboge, jalap, scammony, seeds of castor-oil plant, croton-oil, elaterium, the hellebores, and colchicum.

From Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology by Robertson, W. G. Aitchison (William George Aitchison )

Amid the wayside rubbish grows one of the gourd family, Ecbalium elaterium, commonly called the squirting cucumber, whose fruit—a rough and extremely bitter little cucumber—is the size of a date. 

From The Life of the Spider by Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander