drug
Pluraldrugs
Pluraldrugs
- 1A substance given to treat disease or relieve symptoms, or to alter some chemical process of the body to a particular end.
This drug reduces inflammation within a few hours.
Pharmacists must check whether two prescribed drugs interact dangerously.
UsageFor what a patient takes, medicine or medication is more usual in everyday talk; drugs can suggest illegal ones.
Similarmedicine, medication, pharmaceutical, medicament
Note
In Paradise Lost (1667), Milton's merchants bring "spicy drugs," using the word for traded spices. Today the medical sense is neutral, used by doctors, pharmacists and regulators alike.
- 2A mind-altering substance taken for recreation, especially one that is illegal and addictive, such as cocaine.
Cocaine is a powerful drug that many countries have banned.
Customs officers seized a large shipment of illegal drugs at the border.
UsageMostly plural: take drugs, be on drugs, do drugs.
Note
In everyday speech this sense lives mostly in the plural: people take drugs or are on drugs, and Hunter S. Thompson writes of the drugs beginning "to take hold."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Hunter S. Thompson wrote the quoted words in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The item attributes the writing, rather than fictional dialogue, to him. en.wiktionary.org
- 3To give someone a drug, or secretly add one to their food or drink, usually without their knowledge or consent, to make them sleepy or unconscious.
The captors tried to drug the prisoner to keep him quiet.
He suspected a rival had drugged him before the match.
UsageOften passive, he was drugged; the food or drink can be the object too: drugged her drink.
Similarsedate, tranquilize
- 4Anything (a substance, emotion, or action) to which a person becomes addicted.
Social media is a drug for many teenagers, hard to put down.
Gambling had become his drug, feeding a craving he couldn't satisfy.
UsageOften after is: love is the drug. My drug of choice can name something you especially crave.
Similaraddiction, obsession, fix, vice
Note
A figure of speech built on the recreational meaning, and it usually comes after the verb: love is the drug, inspiration is my drug. Pop music loves the pattern, from Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" (1975) to Ke$ha's "Your Love Is My Drug" (2010). The phrase drug of choice travels with it, naming a craving rather than a chemical: "Fear was my drug of choice."
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Roxy Music's song "Love Is the Drug" was released in 1975. en.wikipedia.org
- Ke$ha's song "Your Love Is My Drug" dates from 2010. en.wikipedia.org
- The quoted wording "Fear was my drug of choice" is attested. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 5To use intoxicating drugs.
To soften the blow from working in such unfamiliar territory, I drank and drugged at the end of the day.
1990, Cindy Lanane, “With The Confidence Other Women Have Given Me”Note
The intransitive use is rare, and it reads most naturally alongside drink. Cindy Lanane writes in 1990 that she "drank and drugged at the end of the day." The pairing does useful work, because the bare verb could otherwise be taken as drugging someone else.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- A 1990 article attributed to Cindy Lanane contains the quoted first-person statement. en.wiktionary.org
- 6Dialectal past tense and past participle of drag, chiefly Southern US, used where standard English has dragged.
She drug the heavy crate across the barn floor.
We had drug the boat up onto the sand before the storm.
UsageUse dragged in standard English. Drug also appears in the expression look what the cat drug in.
Note
It may be very old, from Old English drōg and a cousin of drew and German trug. It may also be a later analogy with hang. Its best-known home is look what the cat drug in.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- One proposed origin derives drug from Old English drōg, related to drew and German trug. en.wiktionary.org
- An alternative explanation connects the vowel change with the pattern of hang/hung. pure.au.dk
- 7A commodity that sits unsold because there is little or no demand for it.
When gas prices spiked, large SUVs became a drug on the market, and dealers cut prices to move them.
The farmer planted twice as many pumpkins as usual, only to find them a drug on the market by October.
UsageMostly in the phrase a drug on the market.
Note
In Dryden's Albion and Albanius (1685), Asebia sings that "virtue shall a drug become". In Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742), a bookseller calls sermons "mere Drugs" because the trade is so glutted with them. Today the sense survives mainly in the fixed phrase a drug on the market, said of goods in oversupply.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The work containing the Dryden quotation was published in 1685. huntington.org
- Henry Fielding wrote Joseph Andrews. gutenberg.org
- Joseph Andrews was first published in 1742. commons.wikimedia.org
- A bookseller calls sermons mere drugs in Joseph Andrews. gutenberg.org
- The bookseller's stated reason is that the trade is overstocked with sermons. gutenberg.org
- 8A person who toils at hard, menial work; a drudge.
Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded / The sweet degrees that this brief world affords / To such as may the passive drugs of it / Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself / In general riot
c. 1605, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”Note
Shakespeare is where a reader is likely to meet this one. Timon of Athens speaks of those who "may the passive drugs of it / Freely command," meaning the world's drudges at a rich man's bidding. The word is obsolete, so in older texts read it as drudge. Despite the shared spelling, it has nothing to do with medicine.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- The cited use occurs in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. en.wiktionary.org
- Timon speaks the quoted words. shakespeare.mit.edu
- Drugs here means drudges subject to the commands of the wealthy. en.wiktionary.org
- This sense is obsolete and means drudge rather than a medicinal substance. en.wiktionary.org
- 9Short form of drugstore: a shop selling medicines along with toiletries, snacks, and other small goods.
“I’ll go this far,” I answered him. “We’ll try going over to the drug. You, me, Ollie if he wants to go, one or two others. Then we’ll talk it over again.”
1980, Stephen King, The Mist - 10To dispense medicines or drugs to patients, whether by prescribing them or by giving them directly.
Past all the doses of your drugging doctors
1610, Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Middle English drogge ("medicine") came from Middle French drogue ("tincture, pharmaceutical product"). The French word possibly came from droge in Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, in the phrase droge vate ("dry barrels"), with the word for "dry" misread as naming the contents, usually dried herbs. Droge goes back through Old Dutch and Proto-Germanic to a root meaning "dry, hard," and it is related to English dry and German trocken.
A Germanic ablaut formation. If old, it is a doublet of 'drew', from Middle English 'drug', from Old English 'drōg' and Proto-Germanic *drōg (compare Dutch 'droeg', German 'trug'). If secondary, it was probably formed by analogy with 'dug'.