medication
Americannoun
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medications
plural
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the use or application of medicine.
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a medicinal substance; medicament.
noun
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treatment with drugs or remedies
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a drug or remedy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of medication
1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin medicātiōn- (stem of medicātiō ). See medicate, -ion
Explanation
If your doctor prescribes something for you to take, it's medication. Medication is another way to say "medicine" or "drug." Your poison ivy rash might be so bad that you need to take medication to stop the itching. People need medication for all sorts of illnesses and disorders throughout their lives, from headache medication to medication for cancer treatment. In the fifteenth century, the word meant "medical treatment of a disease or wound," from the Latin medicationem, "healing or cure," with its root in medicus, which means both "healing" and "physician."
Vocabulary lists containing medication
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Pharmacy Words
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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:
Even though Ean and I passed on the ultrasound for Gumdrop, we still had to pay for the office visit and anti-nausea medication.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
Fearing the man suffered crush injuries, paramedics reached his arm through the trash and administered medication through an IV as the two-hour rescue stretched on, he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
James finds the gas on in the kitchen, although Lou insists she turned it off, and tension simmers between them when James suggests that maybe she forgot because of her medication.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
As I got fitter after my cancer treatment ended doctors gradually reduced my heart medication dosages, but I was still having side effects like a low heart rate and fatigue.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
Or the pain medication for her finger made her brain wibbly.
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
As employers brace for a fresh round of rising healthcare costs that outpace inflation, the stakes are getting higher for companies to contain spending on treatments such as popular GLP-1 medications for weight loss.
From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026
“Ozempic Face” isn’t what most people are going for when they start taking these medications.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
The difficulty is that these medications also interfere to varying degrees with other prostaglandins that perform important functions.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 3, 2026
Think about your other everyday expenses, like groceries or medications, and how those costs might rise in the future.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026
I thought that pharmaceutical companies were probably always growing because more medications were constantly being developed; and the field of medicine was so rapidly advancing.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
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.
