Other forms: antidotes
An antidote is a substance that cancels a poison. An antidote to snake venom, no known antidote, administer the antidote.
Most poisons have no antidote, which is why treatment is usually supportive rather than reversing. The ones that exist are specific: naloxone for opioids, atropine for certain nerve agents, antivenom for snakebite. Figuratively, an antidote is anything that counteracts something unpleasant: an antidote to all that gloom. Note antidotal, and that antivenom is the correct word for snakebite rather than antivenin.
1nounantidoteA substance that cancels a poison.
“There is no antidote and the treatment is entirely supportive.”
2nounanythingAnything that counteracts something unpleasant.
“An hour in that garden is an antidote to about anything.”
antidote is a counteracting substance.
ANTI-dote → your AUNT
Your aunt keeps a small blue bottle in her bag. You drink from the wrong glass, she puts two drops on your tongue and the burning stops within a minute.
hooks ontoaunt
Greek antidoton means given against — anti-, against, plus didonai, to give. The same didonai gives dose and anecdote, so an antidote and a dose are the same act of giving with the direction reversed.
Proto-Indo-European
*deh₃-
Latin
antidotum
English, today
antidote
Built from
From Latin antidotum. From Latin antidotum, from Ancient Greek ἀντίδοτον (“antidote, remedy”), a clipping of ἀντίδοτον φάρμακον, from ἀντιδίδωμι (“to give in return, repay”), from ἀντί (“against”) + δίδωμι (“to give”). Compare French antidote.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Emergency & Rescue