laudanum

英 ['l??d(?)n?m; 'l?-] 美['l?d?n?m]

laudanum 鴉片酊

一種含鴉片的藥物，詞源同laud,贊美。因這種藥物能使人產生飄飄然的感覺而得名。

laudanum: laudanum: [16] Laudanum, the name of a tincture of opium, a forerunner of modern heroin and crack, was coined by the 16th-century Swiss physician Paracelsus. He used it for a medicine of his own devising which according to the prescription he gave out contained all sorts of expensive ingredients such as gold leaf and pearls. It was generally believed, however, that the reason for the medicine’s effectiveness was a generous measure of opium in the mixture, and so in due course laudanum came to have its current use.

It is not known where Paracelsus got the name from, but he could well have based it on Latin lādanum ‘resin’, which came from Greek ládanon, a derivative of ledon ‘mastic’.
laudanum (n.): c. 1600, from Modern Latin laudanum (1540s), coined by Paracelsus for a medicine he mixed, supposed to contain gold and crushed pearls and many expensive ingredients, but probably owing its effectiveness to only one of them, opium. Perhaps from Latin laudare "to praise," or from Latin ladanum "a gum resin," from Greek ladanon, a word perhaps of Semitic origin. The word soon came to be used for "any alcoholic tincture of opium." Latin ladanum was used in Middle English of plant resins, but this is not regarded as the source of the 16c. word.

2. Mrs. Shakespeare advised her to take a spoonful of laudanum for the headache.: 莎士比亞夫人建議她服用一片鴉片酊治她的頭疼.

3. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.: 謾罵與鞭打就好像鴉片, 敏感度降低時,必須加重其藥量.