bad medicine
1
7.2
- noun
:
mala medicina
- The way I see it, the pension crisis remedy shouldn't be to make the healthy swallow the same bad medicine as those in trouble.
- the use of bad medicine
Examples
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But to kill many of them might be bad medicine.
Fiction book (1992) -
It was bad medicine for him!
Fiction book (1992) -
This was very bad medicine!
Fiction book (1992) -
This is bad medicine.
-
Even for the time, this constituted bad medicine to use penicillin to treat tonsillitis unless it was acute or unless there was a confirmed case of strep.
Academic text (2014) -
Rushing patients through treatment can often lead to bad medicine that does not address their real needs.
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Sometimes, doctors have to prescribe bad medicine for conditions that are hard to treat effectively.
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In certain cases, accepting bad medicine is necessary to avoid worse outcomes, despite its unpleasant nature.
Synonyms
1
3.7
Care or medicine that does not make someone better
How Helpful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'bad' modifies 'medicine', so a learner who knows both words will understand it as medicine that is harmful, ineffective, or unpleasant. The subtle figurative nuance (e.g. a necessary but unpleasant remedy) is context-dependent but follows ordinary adjective+noun semantics common across languages, making the phrase readily inferable.
Etymology
Bad medicine comes from the image of a bitter or unpleasant medicine, something that tastes bad or seems to do no good but people still take because they think it is needed. That's why it now means a treatment or action that is unpleasant or not very helpful but sometimes 'necessary'.