vial
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
idioms
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of vial
1300–50; Middle English viole, variant of fiole phial
Explanation
The word vial sounds like another word, "vile" (making them homonyms), but they mean completely different things. A vial is just a small glass bottle that contains a chemical or drug. "Vile" is evil. One of the coolest things about the English language is how specific you can get. For example, got a small glass bottle made for carrying chemicals or drugs? There's a word for that! That word is vial. There are bottles for soda and bottles for beer, but if what you're carrying is drugs, chemicals, or similar substances, you're carrying them in a vial.
Vocabulary lists containing vial
"Of Mice and Men"
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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Bless Me, Ultima
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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:
So Reavie deputized a friend of a friend in D.C. to dip a vial into the green water and ship it to him overnight.
From Slate ● Jun. 27, 2026
Soon-Shiong also referred to Anktiva as a “single jab,” later adding that it was a “little vial that you inject subcutaneously.”
From Barron's ● Mar. 24, 2026
Security Council, where he held up a small vial of white powder to illustrate the alleged danger of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons.
From Salon ● Mar. 7, 2026
Ezugwu also returned with a vial to find Ifunanya had died.
From BBC ● Feb. 7, 2026
Babulya handed a small stoneware vial to the domovoi, and he ladled some of the potion into it.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
On a Thursday night in West Hollywood, a sleek, multi-level townhome is filled with stylish guests holding fragrance vials the way partygoers cling to cocktails.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
The "hundreds" of vials, labelled Virus Transport Medium, are believed to be among thousands of tonnes of waste dumped over the cliffs at the north of the island.
From BBC ● Apr. 30, 2026
The demand has given rise to a burgeoning gray market, where wellness spas, multilevel marketers and telehealth websites ply the public with vials of “research grade” peptides labeled “not for human use.”
From Salon ● Apr. 4, 2026
As the lab technician prepared my vials, I told him, “I’m going to upload my blood work to AI!”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 4, 2026
She didn’t want any loose vials of that stuff rolling through the corridors in the middle of the night.
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
When the demand for vaccines became an outcry, though, the agency found the money to pay for five million more doses to be vialed.
From New York Times ● Aug. 3, 2022
But by the time the health agency ordered 500,000 doses worth to be vialed on June 10, other countries with outbreaks had submitted their own orders and the earliest delivery date was October.
From New York Times ● Aug. 3, 2022
My vialed water samples are sitting in a tube rack.
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
Little pseudo-scorpions were very abundant, and I could have vialed hundreds.
From Jungle Peace by Beebe, William
In fact, his ingenuous enthusiasm for this vialled virility seems for the moment to have swept him off his feet.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
