Other forms: drugs
A drug is a medicine, or a substance taken for its effect on the mind. A new drug, drug trial, drug use.
The same word covers what a pharmacist dispenses and what is sold on a street corner, and the line between them is legal rather than chemical — morphine and heroin are close relatives. Careful writing says a person who uses drugs rather than a drug user.
1noundrugA medicine, or a substance taken for its effect on the mind.
“The doctor prescribed a new drug to lower his blood pressure.”
drug is a substance.
Middle French drogue meant a pharmaceutical product, probably from a Dutch word for a dry cask.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰerǵʰ- — to strengthen; become hard or solid
Proto-Germanic
*draugiz — dry, hard
Old Dutch
drōgi — dry
Middle Dutch
droghe — dry
Middle Low German
droge
Middle French
drogue
Middle English
drogge — medicine
English, today
drug
Built from
From Middle English drogge (“medicine”), from Middle French drogue, drocque (“tincture, pharmaceutical product”) (1462), from Middle Dutch - or Middle Low German droge, as in droge vate (“dry vats, dry barrels”), mistaking droge for the contents, which were usually dried herbs, plants or wares. Droge comes from Middle Dutch droghe (“dry”), from Old Dutch drōgi (“dry”), from Proto-Germanic draugiz (“dry, hard”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European dʰerǵʰ- (“to strengthen; become hard or solid”), from dʰer- (“to hold, hold fast, support”). Displaced native Old English lybb (“drug, medicine”). Cognate with English dry, Dutch droog (“dry”), German trocken (“dry”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA