blue devil
- noun
- /blu ˈdɛvəl/
- Archaic
:
amobarbital sódico
- The patient was administered a blue devil to help induce sleep before the procedure.
Examples
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Doctors seldom prescribe blue devils today due to the risk of addiction.
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Some people abused blue devils for their sedative effects in the mid-20th century.
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The blue devil is a type of barbiturate.
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Some patients find blue devils helpful for sleep.
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The patient was administered a blue devil to help induce sleep before the procedure.
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Doctors seldom prescribe blue devils today due to the risk of addiction.
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Some people abused blue devils for their sedative effects in the mid-20th century.
Synonyms
49
9.9
An old sedative drug once used to help people sleep
4
9.9
A prescription medicine that makes a person sleep or feel calm under a doctor's care
A drug used to calm people and help them sleep
A strong medicine that makes people sleep and calms them
Surface Forms
Morphology
blue + devil
This is a specialized, lexicalized drug name whose meaning (the sodium salt form of amobarbital) is not compositionally derived from the parts. Even if a learner knows 'blue' (or its slang use for a sedative) and 'devil', 'devil' does not signal the chemical or pharmaceutical sense, so the overall meaning would not be predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Blue devil for a sleeping drug may come from its blue color and the word devil, used to show how strong or dangerous it was. Because the medicine made people very sleepy and could be addictive, the name came to mean 'a sleep drug'.