laudanum
Americannoun
-
a tincture of opium.
-
Obsolete. any preparation in which opium is the chief ingredient.
noun
-
a tincture of opium
-
(formerly) any medicine of which opium was the main ingredient
Etymology
Origin of laudanum
1595–1605; originally Medieval Latin variant of ladanum; arbitrarily used by Paracelsus to name a remedy based on opium
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.
But then so did the telephone, the railway, internal combustion, photography, laudanum, mirror glass, fire, television, gunpowder, the crossbow, distillation, the slingshot, the bridge high across a foaming ghyll.
From The Guardian • Apr. 19, 2016
Geraldine Chaplin brandishes a whip, Charlotte Rampling swigs laudanum, Mathieu Amalric inhabits an "elevator apartment," and Maria de Medeiros is an absurdly gullible mother.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2016
Anesthesia was virtually unknown; patients scarcely drugged by doses of laudanum or brandy expected only death from the agony of the knife.
From Time Magazine Archive
M. M. Fomentation clyster with oil and laudanum, push the stone back with a bougie; if from cantharides give half a pint of warm water every ten minutes.
From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
By the early 1820's, the old English patent medicines, whether of dwindling British vintage or of burgeoning American manufacture, were as familiar as laudanum or castor oil.
From Old English Patent Medicines in America by Griffenhagen, George B.
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.
