medicine

Less common meanings

6. 6
   alcoholnounslangcountable or uncountable

   Recreational drugs, especially alcoholic drinks, taken for enjoyment rather than healing.

   The bartender slid him a glass and said the medicine was on the house.

   A little medicine after work helped him forget the long meeting.

   Similarbooze, alcohol, liquor

   Note

   Slang that borrows the word's respectability: a drink becomes medicine, as if a doctor had prescribed it. It shares its spelling and its place in a sentence with the pharmaceutical sense, so the joke works only where context makes it obvious.

7. 7
   nounobsoletecountable or uncountable

   Black magic or superstition; the practice of or belief in harmful magical power.

   Note

   The dark edge of the word's magical range, now entirely out of use. A reader who meets it in old texts should take it as harmful sorcery or superstition, not as healing. Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact

   • Medicine has an obsolete sense meaning black magic or superstition, distinct from healing. en.wiktionary.org
8. 8
   nounobsoletecountable or uncountable

   A philter or love potion; a magical drink prepared to inspire love or desire in the one who takes it.

   If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged. It could not be else. I have drunk medicines.

   1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV

   Note

   A countable usage with a Shakespearean ring. In Henry IV, Part I (1598), a speaker suspects a rascal has "given me medicines to make me love him" and concludes, "I have drunk medicines." The verbs show how the potion was imagined: it was given and drunk like any dose. The sense is obsolete, so in modern prose it reads only as an echo of older literature. Source

   Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts

   • The play was first published in 1598; its earliest surviving complete quarto has a title page dated 1598. folger.edu
   • The work is by William Shakespeare. shakespearedocumented.folger.edu
   • A speaker suspects a rascal has given him medicines to inspire love; both quoted passages are accurate. folger.edu
   • The passage uses medicine countably for a potion that is given and drunk. folger.edu
9. 9
   nounobsoletecountable or uncountable

   A physician; a person trained to treat disease and illness.

   I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone

   1598, William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

   Note

   Here the practitioner takes the name of the art. Latin medicus, "physician," sits behind the whole word, and for a time English let medicine mean the person too. Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well has "I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone." Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 5 facts

   • Medicine historically denoted a physician, applying the name of the art to its practitioner. en.wiktionary.org
   • Latin medicus, meaning physician, is an ancestor of English medicine through intermediate forms. en.wiktionary.org
   • English formerly used medicine to mean a physician. en.wiktionary.org
   • William Shakespeare wrote All's Well That Ends Well. gutenberg.org
   • The quoted words occur in the play; Lafew speaks them in Act II, Scene I. gutenberg.org
10. 10
    verbobsolete

    To treat a person or ailment with medicine.

    Note

    Delia Bacon, in The philosophy of the plays of Shakspere unfolded (1857), uses the -ing form as a noun in "the medicining of the body." That gerund is the shape a modern reader is most likely to meet. Source

    Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

    • Delia Bacon wrote The philosophy of the plays of Shakspere unfolded, first published in 1857; the reproduced original title page confirms the year. gutenberg.org
    • Bacon uses the exact phrase the medicining of the body, with medicining functioning as a noun. gutenberg.org