Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Narcotic
/nɑːrˈkɑːtɪk/noun
A drug that dulls the senses and brings on sleep, and in legal use any banned drug.
The Greek roots
ναρκωτικός
narkōtikós
numbing
νάρκη
nárkē
numbness, torpor
Literally: “numbing”
The story of the word
νάρκη is the numbness of a limb gone dead, and the Greeks gave the same name to the electric ray, the fish that shocks a hand senseless. Hippocratic writers used ναρκωτικός for drugs that numb, and English had narcotic by the 14th century, centuries before it meant anything illegal. Narcolepsy is built on the same root, a seizure of sleep.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
narcolepsynarcosisnarcotise
In a sentence
Legally the word narcotic now covers drugs that have no numbing effect at all.