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:
The Nobel season opens Monday with the medicine prize, which experts say could go to research into the GLP-1 appetite-regulating hormone behind weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 2026
In May, trustee Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary, gave $200 million, one of the largest gifts in the university’s history, to spread the technology across fields from medicine to the arts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026
"But when I met my oncologist I realised how ignorant I was and what gargantuan strides medicine has made recently."
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
Yet genomic technologies have transformed disease research and made contributions to clinical medicine, particularly oncology.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2026
Most patients sleep on dirty floors and there’s a constant shortage of food, medicine, and clean water.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Some states have since turned to compounding pharmacies, which make customized, non-FDA-approved versions of prescription medicines.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
Mobile medical units carrying oxygen, nebulisers, suction equipment, malaria tests and medicines visited more than 20 affected villages.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
"But several lifesaving supply lines in WHO's Aden warehouse are already at zero stock, including trauma kits and essential medicines," Heinzelmann said, appealing for more funding.
From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026
Barber and Sil caution that resurrected antimicrobial peptides are unlikely to become new medicines anytime soon.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026
He was particularly proud of a dropdown inner stowage pouch, bulging with little plastic bottles of vitamins and medicines, with a transparent window built into it.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
"Fill high the bowl, benumb His aching sense With medicined sleep."—O awful in Thy woe!
From The Christian Year by John Keble
For two long weeks had he to he abed, he, who, as he himself told, had never to this day needed any healing but such as the leech who medicined his beasts could give him.
From Margery — Volume 08 by Clara Bell
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
This was grievous to Gharib who commanded the hurt to be medicined and turning to his Chief Officers, asked them what they counselled.
From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 07 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
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
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
And she Shall know no more its tender, sweet caress, Soft medicining woe.
From Lilith The Legend of the First Woman by Ada Langworthy Collier
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
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
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.
