Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Codeine
/ˈkoʊdiːn/noun
A mild opiate drawn from opium, used against pain and cough.
The Greek roots
κώδεια
kṓdeia
poppy head, seed capsule
Literally: “poppy-head substance”
Follow a root:κώδεια1 word
The story of the word
Pierre-Jean Robiquet isolated the alkaloid in Paris in 1832 and named it from κώδεια, the seed head of the poppy. That capsule is the part scored with a knife so the latex bleeds out, which is how opium is harvested in the first place. The -ine on the end is the chemists' suffix for alkaloids, worn by morphine, nicotine and caffeine alike.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1830s
In a sentence
The pharmacist warned that codeine would bind him up for days.