medicine
Americannoun
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medicines
plural
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any substance or substances used in treating disease or illness; medicament; remedy.
- Synonyms:
- physic, pharmaceutical, drug, medication
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the art or science of restoring or preserving health or due physical condition, as by means of drugs, surgical operations or appliances, or manipulations: often divided into medicine proper, surgery, and obstetrics.
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the art or science of treating disease with drugs or curative substances, as distinguished from surgery and obstetrics.
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the medical profession.
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(among North American Indians) any object or practice regarded as having magical powers.
verb (used with object)
idioms
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give someone a dose / taste of his / her own medicine, to repay or punish a person for an injury by use of the offender's own methods.
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take one's medicine, to undergo or accept punishment, especially deserved punishment.
He took his medicine like a man.
noun
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any drug or remedy for use in treating, preventing, or alleviating the symptoms of disease
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the science of preventing, diagnosing, alleviating, or curing disease
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any nonsurgical branch of medical science
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the practice or profession of medicine
he's in medicine
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something regarded by primitive people as having magical or remedial properties
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to accept a deserved punishment
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an unpleasant experience in retaliation for and by similar methods to an unkind or aggressive act
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The scientific study or practice of diagnosing, treating, and preventing diseases or disorders of the body or mind of a person or animal.
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An agent, such as a drug, used to treat disease or injury.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of medicine
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English medicin, from Latin medicīna (ars) “healing (art),” feminine of medicīnus “pertaining to a physician,” from medic(us) “physician” ( cf. medical) + -īnus -ine 1
Explanation
Medicine is the field (and body of knowledge) that teaches doctors how to help people. Doctors also give medicine to patients. Cough syrup, antibiotics, and pills are all forms of medicine. When someone gives you medicine, they are medicating you. People who study medicine become doctors and nurses. Without the field of medicine — which expands all the time — there would be so much more sickness and death. Medicine is devoted to finding out everything about health, illness, and the human body.
Vocabulary lists containing medicine
National Nurses Week: Common Medical Terms
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Abbey Road
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Unit 4
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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:
She mainly shops at Boots for skincare, first aid and medicine, but thinks prices for its sanitary products are "ridiculously expensive" - something her friend Yasmin agrees with.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
Earlier this week, the prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced in Stockholm, with the latter going to Canadian poet Anne Carson on Thursday for her modern twists on Greek mythology and antiquity.
From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026
But before we got into politics, we were both physicians in internal medicine and cardiothoracic surgery, respectively.
From Salon ● Oct. 8, 2026
The drug company developed a game-changing medicine that helps people lose weight and will ultimately impact a broad cross-section of industries after researching a treatment for diabetes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
“But what if he needs more medicine that costs a hundred times more than the insulin?”
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
The row was sharpened by an earlier US suspension of drug funding after the embassy alleged theft of donated medicines, which the government disputed.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
And still, these families face denials, delays and difficulty accessing the care and medicines they need.
From Salon ● Oct. 8, 2026
Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed medicines worldwide, but they can kill beneficial bacteria as well as harmful ones.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 7, 2026
Health officials exempted rare disease drugs and other medicines based on comments received from the public, they said in a Federal Register document released Wednesday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
“Angelina, bring my small cabinet of medicines and the bag of herbs. A hot poultice placed on my belly will help to shrink the womb and parsley will bring away the afterbirth.”
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
I question whether reading Seneca, or Epictetus, or any moral or philosophic writer, living or dead, would have as effectually medicined my mind.
From Tales and Novels — Volume 09 by Maria Edgeworth
The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree.
From Fairy Fingers A Novel by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie
He was flattered and pleased at being taken seriously and bidden to think in this straightforward, manly fashion; it unstrung his reserve and medicined to his wounded self-respect.
From South Wind by Norman Douglas
Would he allow me to wear out life with famine; or was the food administered to me to be medicined with death?
From The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
This man medicined my body from without nor anointed me with aught of ointments: by Allah, surely this is none other than consummate skill!
From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 01 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
Go thou thy way, sorrowful and suffering soul, alone; and if thy own heart bleeds, strive thou to soothe its pangs, by medicining the wounds and healing the hurts of another.
From What Answer? by Anna E. Dickinson
A great great sin plots in the house this day; Too strong for the faithful, beyond medicining … And help stands far away.
From The Agamemnon of Aeschylus Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes by Gilbert Murray
Certainly, now you see that all your Doctoring and medicining hath been to some purpose, and now you feel also that all herbs were made for some good effects.
From The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and the Second Part, The Confession of the New Married Couple by A. Marsh
Thus, by the secret hand of Thy medicining was my swelling abated, and the troubled and bedimmed eyesight of my mind, by the smarting anointings of healthful sorrows, was from day to day healed.
From The Confessions of St. Augustine by E. B. (Edward Bouverie) Pusey
As the night struggles slowly into day so sickness climbs stealthily into health, and nature has a system of medicining her ailments which might only be thwarted by the ministrations of a mere doctor.
From Mary, Mary by Padraic Colum
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.
