Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One that prepares and sells drugs and other medicines; a pharmacist.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who practises pharmacy; a skilled person who prepares drugs for medicinal uses and keeps them for sale; a pharmacist.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who prepares and sells drugs or compounds for medicinal purposes.
- noun the system of weights by which medical prescriptions were formerly compounded. The pound and ounce are the same as in Troy weight; they differ only in the manner of subdivision. The ounce is divided into 8 drams, 24 scruples, 480 grains. See
Troy weight .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun now historical A
person whomakes andprovides /sells drugs and/ormedicines . - noun nonstandard, now historical A
drugstore orpharmacy .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a health professional trained in the art of preparing and dispensing drugs
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Hindoo pothukoor (whence our word apothecary) feeling my pulse and looking at me with an air of sagacity.
Burlesques 2006
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He used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he explained afterwards, used it “to insult him.”
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He used the word apothecary instead of doctor on purpose, and, as he explained afterwards, used it “to insult him.”
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1851
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Hindoo pothukoor (whence our word apothecary) feeling my pulse and looking at me with an air of sagacity.
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(whence our word apothecary) feeling my pulse and looking at me with an air of sagacity.
Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray 1837
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The rest of the errands were much like others he had run in the past, except for one small item; among the other items Cameron wanted from the apothecary was a remarkable quantity of laudanum, and for the first time since Paul had known him, a small amount of morphia.
red dust Ryn Cricket 2010
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It was — the government controlled it and the drugstores — and they were called apothecary shops carried tobacco.
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The apothecary was a decently dressed young man with a kindly air and reasonably clean hands.
Drums of Autumn Gabaldon, Diana 1997
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The fly in the ointment of the apothecary was a baby to you.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, September 10, 1892 Various
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"You see, Will" -- every body called the apothecary's clerk Will -- "we had a school and Sid kept it, and he licked the fellers, and they couldn't stand it."
The Knights of the White Shield Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play Edward A. Rand
sionnach commented on the word apothecary
May the poth be with you.
December 13, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word apothecary
See notes on grossarii (thence cubebs) and grocer and spicer and unguent for more.
"The medieval spice merchant or apothecary seems to have handled several kinds of products whose relation to each other is not all that clear: edible spices, medicine, sweets (including medicinal preparations but also candied fruit, sugar-coated nuts and spices, nougats, confectionary of all kinds), cordials (spiced and fortified wines), wax (candles and sealing wax), paper, and ink. Such establishments might even sell pasta or gunpowder. From Constantinople the regulations for the guild of perfumers show the overlap between fragrance and dyestuffs. The members of the guild were instructed to have a standing supply of exotics that included edible spices, incense substances, and dye-coloring agents in addition to perfume ingredients."
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 119.
November 28, 2017