Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A colorless or white crystalline alkaloid, C17H21NO4, extracted from coca leaves, sometimes used in medicine as a local anesthetic especially for the eyes, nose, or throat and widely used as an illicit drug for its euphoric and stimulating effects.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An alkaloid (C17H21NO4) obtained from the leaves of the coca, Erythroxylon Coca.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Chem.) A powerful narcotic alkaloid, C17H21NO4, obtained from the leaves of coca. It is a bitter, white, crystalline substance, and is remarkable for producing local insensibility to pain. It is classified as addictive and is not available in the U. S. without a prescription, but is nevertheless one of the most widespread illegal drugs of abuse. It is used in several forms, including small pellets of free base, called crack. Most of the cacaine illegally used in the U.S. is imported.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable A stimulant narcotic in the form of a white powder that users generally self-administer by insufflation through the nose.
  • noun countable Any derivative of cocaine.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a narcotic (alkaloid) extracted from coca leaves; used as a surface anesthetic or taken for pleasure; can become powerfully addictive

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French cocaïne, from coca, coca, from Spanish; see coca.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Quechua kuka, probably via French cocaïne.

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Examples

  • The word cocaine refers to the drug in both a powder (cocaine) and crystal (crack) form.

    The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make Sean Covey 2006

  • The word cocaine refers to the drug in both a powder (cocaine) and crystal (crack) form.

    The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make Sean Covey 2006

  • He joins forces with former army hero Calvin Dexter to hit at the heart of the trade, which he identifies as cocaine's transportation by boat, and uses a budget of $2 billion to target vessels and corrupt officials in a global operation.

    Reuters: Top News 2010

  • When Mark Penn went on Hardball, purportedly to disown Shaheen’s aspersions, he instead sharpened them by using the word cocaine on air.

    Big Girls Don’t Cry Rebecca Traister 2010

  • When Mark Penn went on Hardball, purportedly to disown Shaheen’s aspersions, he instead sharpened them by using the word cocaine on air.

    Big Girls Don’t Cry Rebecca Traister 2010

  • When Mark Penn went on Hardball, purportedly to disown Shaheen’s aspersions, he instead sharpened them by using the word cocaine on air.

    Big Girls Don’t Cry Rebecca Traister 2010

  • When Mark Penn went on Hardball, purportedly to disown Shaheen’s aspersions, he instead sharpened them by using the word cocaine on air.

    Big Girls Don’t Cry Rebecca Traister 2010

  • At the time, we had a very pretentious bar called simply The State Bar, complete with the original filming model of the blimp from Blade Runner over the bar and a collection of 20something SMU brats already so far gone in cocaine addiction that their noses looked like Michael Jackson's.

    Bad humor (Jack Bog's Blog) 2009

  • As cocaine is a powerful stimulant it is often abused for this effect1.

    Cocaine Toxicity 2010

  • Freebase cocaine is essentially pure cocaine that is made today by preparing an aqueous solution of cocaine HCI and adding ammonia or bicarbonate to alkalinize the solution and precipitate alkaloidal cocaine. 6 The "freebase" formed is nonwater-soluble, does not decompose. with heat and can be crushed, and mixed with tobacco and smoked.

    Cocaine Toxicity 2010

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