vial
Americannoun
-
vials
plural
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
The band joked they had snuck in a vial of their own tears to promote their single A Tear in Space, and pretended to hide them in the capsule.
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 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
The fragrance is contained in a small, portable vial, costing $3 to $4, according to a spokesperson.
From Barron's ● Jan. 9, 2026
Quickly, before anyone comes in to question me, I pipette stasis gel in each vial.
From "The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera
He takes vials from his refrigerator of GHK-Cu, which he tells AFP will give him "beautiful skin", and Retatrutide, which will help him "feel less hungry".
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
CLIFTON, N.J.—On a laboratory table that normally sits empty, hundreds of feces samples are arranged in stacks six vials high.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
Some people started asking in meetings why Novo wasn’t using vials, according to former Novo employees.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 5, 2026
In Providence’s 11 Southern California medical facilities, it currently has a combined 167 vials on hand.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Frank had known what the two vials were immediately.
From "The Son of Neptune" 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 William Beebe
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.
