vitamin pill
- noun
- /ˈvaɪtəmɪn pɪl/
- Many people take vitamin pills daily to ensure they get all the necessary nutrients.
- take vitamin pills
Examples
-
She was sitting at the table, vials of vitamin pills near two place settings.
Fiction book (1995) -
Sometimes I brought them oranges, and one early morning I left a bottle of vitamin pills for them on the porch rail.
Fiction book (1997) -
I took some of my vitamin pills.
-
I got you vitamin pills and invited you to dinner every day.
Fiction book (1997) -
Maybe they slipped them some new kind of vitamin pill.
-
- Dr Hill prescribed vitamin pills.
-
You might as well be taking vitamin pills, Helena.
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My father froze, a jar of vitamin pills in each hand.
Fiction book (1997) -
He's suspicious of commercially prepared vitamin pills.
-
The sharks' food is stuffed with specially formulated vitamin pills.
Academic text (1994)
How Effective
- NSFW
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently compositional: a 'vitamin pill' is readily understood as a pill that contains vitamins by combining the noun 'vitamin' with 'pill'. This noun+noun construction is common and cross-linguistically regular, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will immediately infer the correct meaning.
Etymology
Vitamin pill comes from the simple picture of a vitamin put inside a small pill you can swallow. That clear image of a tiny tablet that gives extra nutrients explains why it means 'a pill taken to support health or prevent a lack of vitamins'.