Other forms: medicines
Medicine is what you take to get better — the syrup, the tablets, the drops the doctor writes down for you. A spoonful measured out at bedtime, a strip of pills with the days of the week printed on the back.
Medicine is also the whole field of healing: she studied medicine for six years, the hospital's department of internal medicine. The first sense counts in the plural (he is on three medicines) and stays uncountable in the mass (take your medicine). Alternative medicine, preventive medicine and sports medicine all belong to the second sense. To give somebody a taste of their own medicine is to do to them the unpleasant thing they do to everyone else.
1nounmedicineA substance you take to treat an illness.~17%
“The medicine tastes awful but it works within an hour.”
synonyms: medication, remedy
2nounsubjectThe science and practice of treating illness.~83%
“She left law to study medicine at thirty.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 6 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: medication
Medicine came through Old French medecine from Latin medicīna, the healing art, and behind that medicus, a physician. The medicine in medicine man travelled a different road: it stands in for Ojibwe mashkiki and words like it in related languages, and there it means healing power rather than a bottle of syrup.
Proto-Indo-European
*med-
oj
mashkiki — medicine
Latin
medicīna — the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine
Old French
medecine
Middle French
medicine
Middle English
medicin
English, today
medicine
Built from
From Middle English medicin, from Middle French medicine, from Old French medecine, from Latin medicīna (“the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine”), feminine of medicīnus (“of or belonging to physic or surgery, or to a physician or surgeon”), from medicus (“a physician, surgeon”). The extended sense of "Indigenous magic" is a oj mashkiki (“medicine”) or mide (or cognates in related languages) when used in compounds such as Grand Medicine Society, medicine lodge, medicine dance, medicine bag, medicine wheel, medicine man, Medicine Line, and bad medicine or place names such as Medicine Hat, Medicine Creek, etc. Displaced native Old English lybb (“drug, medicine”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA