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

See Examples For:

elaterium

It forms colourless scales which have a bitter taste, but it is highly inadvisable to taste either this substance or elaterium.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 2 "Ehud" to "Electroscope" by Various

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

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 juice of the unripe fruit, when expressed and allowed to stand, deposits elaterium as a green sediment with an acrid taste, a faint odour, and powerful cathartic properties.

From The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 2: Ebert to Estremadura by Various

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 )