moxa
Americannoun
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moxas
plural
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a flammable substance or material obtained from the leaves of certain Chinese and Japanese wormwood plants, especially Artemisia moxa.
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this substance or a similar one of cotton, wool, or the like, placed on the skin usually in the form of a cone or cylinder and ignited for use as a counterirritant.
noun
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a downy material obtained from various plants and used in Oriental medicine by being burned on the skin as a cauterizing agent or counterirritant for the skin
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any of various plants yielding this material, such as the wormwood Artemisia chinensis
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of moxa
1670–80; by uncertain mediation < Japanese mogusa, equivalent to mo ( y ) e burn + -gusa, combining form of kusa herb
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:
I made the experiment, setting the moxa where… the greatest anger and soreness still continued.
From Webster's Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster
He considered that the moxa must be admitted, without contradiction, to be the remedy par excellence against rachitis.
From Psychotherapy by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
The Abyssinians moxa themselves in hetacombs for fashion’s sake.
From Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 2 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
In asthma he was particularly successful with the moxa.
From Psychotherapy by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
It is related of a vassal of Okitsugu that he was found one day with three high officials of the shogun's court busily engaged in applying a moxa to his foot.
From A History of the Japanese People From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era by F. (Frank) Brinkley
Our doctor, my chum, or I will come and apply moxas.
From Father Goriot by Ellen Marriage
Her nervous crises, beginning with sobs, ended in floods of tears; and every kind of remedy, from diet-drinks to moxas, had been employed, so that, through sheer weariness, she accepted Bouvard's offer to cure her.
From Bouvard and Pécuchet A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life by Gustave Flaubert
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.
