pill

Pluralpills

Formspills, pilling, pilled

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A small, usually round or cylindrical object made for easy swallowing, generally containing some kind of medication.

   Each pill should be taken with food to reduce stomach upset.

   The bottle contained thirty small white pills and a folded instruction sheet.

   Similartablet

   Note

   The everyday, catch-all use: any small dose made for swallowing counts, solid or capsule alike, a line that the stricter tablet sense draws. The word came through Middle Low German or Middle Dutch pille, probably from Latin pila, pilula. It has no connection to the pill that means "peel," a doublet of that word from Old English pilian, nor to the pill that names a coastal inlet, from Old English pyll.

2. 2
   nouncolloquialuncountabledefinite

   Contraceptive medication taken by a woman, usually as a daily oral tablet, to prevent pregnancy.

   Her gynecologist suggested she stay on the pill for another year.

   After her second child, she stopped using the pill altogether.

   Note

   Grammar sets this sense apart. It takes the definite article and no plural, so a woman is on the pill, goes on the pill, or goes off it, rather than being on pills. The on/off phrasing treats it as an ongoing regimen, not a single dose. It is informal but entirely ordinary: Loretta Lynn could call a 1975 song simply "The Pill" and be understood.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Something offensive, unpleasant, or distasteful that must nonetheless be accepted or endured.

   The pay cut was a pill nobody on the staff wanted to swallow.

   Apologizing in front of everyone was a pill she forced herself to take.

   Note

   A figure taken straight from the medicinal sense: the unpleasant thing is pictured as a dose that has to go down. Verbs of taking medicine keep the image alive, especially swallow and take. In E. M. Forster's The Longest Journey (1907), Mr. Pembroke calls an unpalatable truth his family has accepted "a little pill." There, the understatement does polite work.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A medicinal object of solid construction, usually compressed bonded powder, rather than a capsule whose shell holds loose powder or liquid.

   The tablet is a firm pill instead of a gelatin capsule.

   Pharmacists press the powder into a solid pill rather than enclosing it in a capsule shell.

   Similartablet

   Note

   Here the word narrows to what a pharmacist means when precision counts: a capsule is not a pill. Everyday speech uses the broad sense for anything swallowed whole. In this strict use the test is construction, solid all the way through versus a shell around a fill. Because most listeners hear the broad meaning, write capsule or tablet outright when the difference matters.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A small piece of any substance, especially a ball of fibers that forms on a fabric's surface through rubbing.

   A single pill of lint clung stubbornly to the cuff of her sweater.

   Cheap knitwear often develops pills after only a few washes.

   Similarfuzzball, bobble

   Note

   Textile talk uses it most for the fuzz that rubbing raises on fabric. Wally Lamb's narrator in I Know This Much Is True (1999) remembers his mother calling these balls "sweater pills." Everyday alternatives include bobble, fuzzball and lint ball, and crawbeen is another name for the same thing. The process of forming them has its own verb, to pill.

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   Of a woven fabric surface, to form small, matted balls of fiber through wear or rubbing.

   Wool blends often pill around the cuffs and collar within a season.

   This cheap fleece pills badly after just one wash.

   Similarbobble

   Note

   Textile vocabulary for what fabric does under wear, and it is intransitive: a sweater pills, and nothing is done to it. The gerund pilling is the form most often met. Jo Sharp's Knitted Sweater Style (1997) notes that short fibers "can cause pilling and itching." Pilling can also mean dosing someone with pills, so outside clothing contexts make the subject clear.

7. 7
   nounslangcountable

   A contemptible, annoying, or thoroughly unpleasant person.

   The new manager turned out to be a pill, complaining about every little thing.

   Stop being a pill and help us clean up the kitchen.

   Similarpain, nuisance, pest

   Note

   A slang put-down with real staying power. P. G. Wodehouse calls Phyllis a pill in Jeeves in the Offing (1960), and Susan Isaacs's Shining Through (2000) has "a real pill" for a woman too grand to say hello. It usually comes with an intensifier or a comparison: a real pill, a pill like her. Keep it to casual talk, and beware its cheerful opposite, which is slang of the same shape.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To treat or dose with pills; to administer pills to someone or an animal.

   Owners often struggle to pill a reluctant dog.

   She pilled her elderly mother carefully, hiding each tablet in soft food.

   Similardose, medicate

   Note

   The object is whoever takes the medicine, not the medicine itself: you pill a cat, a dog or yourself. The verb is most at home where the swallowing is a struggle, as in "Pilling the cat is such a nightmare." With a reflexive object it can suggest excess, as in someone who pills herself with all sorts of herbal medicines.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To persuade or convince someone to accept or believe something.

   The salesman pilled them into signing a long contract.

   Activists pill the public with simple, repeated slogans.

   Similarpersuade, coax, talk, convince

   Note

   Internet slang that grew out of the phrase red pill and widened to any persuading. It keeps the online flavor of that source. Outside internet talk, persuade or convince is the neutral choice. It shares its origin with the medicinal senses, not with the older verbs meaning "peel."

10. 10
    nouncountable

    A rounded rectangle holding a short text label that indicates the tag or category an item belongs to.

    The interface displays each active filter as a clickable pill.

    Designers grouped the status labels into colored pills along the header.

    Similarchip, tag, badge, label

    Note

    Interface designers name this element by its look: a short label in a rounded rectangle, shaped like a tablet. It is countable and often plural on screen, as in a row of filter pills or colored status pills. Many users would call the same thing a tag or a label. Documentation should therefore describe it the first time it uses the word.

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