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pill
1[ pil ]
noun
- a small globular or rounded mass of medicinal substance, usually covered with a hard coating, that is to be swallowed whole.
- something unpleasant that has to be accepted or endured:
Ingratitude is a bitter pill.
- Slang. a tiresomely disagreeable person.
- Sports Slang. a ball, especially a baseball or golf ball.
- the pill. birth-control pill.
- pills, British Slang. billiards.
verb (used with object)
- to dose with pills.
- to form or make into pills.
- Slang. to blackball.
verb (used without object)
- to form into small, pill-like balls, as the fuzz on a wool sweater. Compare depill.
pill
2[ pil ]
verb (used with or without object)
- British Dialect. to peel.
- Obsolete. to become or cause to become bald.
pill
3[ pil ]
verb (used with object)
- to rob, plunder, or pillage.
pill
1/ pɪl /
verb
- archaic.to peel or skin (something)
- archaic.to pillage or plunder (a place)
- obsolete.to make or become bald
pill
2/ pɪl /
noun
- a small spherical or ovoid mass of a medicinal substance, intended to be swallowed whole
- the pill informal.sometimes capital an oral contraceptive
- something unpleasant that must be endured (esp in the phrase bitter pill to swallow )
- slang.a ball or disc
- a small ball of matted fibres that forms on the surface of a fabric through rubbing
- slang.an unpleasant or boring person
verb
- tr to give pills to
- tr to make pills of
- intr
- to form into small balls
- (of a fabric) to form small balls of fibre on its surface through rubbing
- slang.tr to blackball
Word History and Origins
Origin of pill1
Word History and Origins
Origin of pill1
Origin of pill2
Idioms and Phrases
- Take a chill pill! Disparaging Slang. chill pill ( def 2 ).
More idioms and phrases containing pill
see bitter pill to swallow ; sugar the pill .Example Sentences
Sometimes you swallow pills you don’t like to get things done.
Body temperature can be monitored through smart pills but also through wearables put on the skin.
He gave her 10 pills each day, in addition to a few liquid medications.
They take the pills for 15 days and log symptoms on a web-based platform.
Maybe 15 or 20 percent of lung cancers in the United States are targeted by these pills that are quite effective and not very toxic.
For Randy, a 50-year-old ex-Mormon gay man, this cure was a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
“He gave me a blue pill, which he said was an antihistamine,” said Chelan.
Medication can now be taken in a single pill rather than a complex cocktail of tablets.
A plastic surgeon gave her a supposedly lethal pill that also failed.
For the Times, which had won four Pulitzer Prizes in 2013, the Snowden slip-up was a bitter pill to swallow.
However cleverly the pill was gilded, the Marshal knew that it was the Emperor's distrust which had lost him the command.
Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind.
Thence to my office, and after several letters writ, home to supper and to bed, and took a pill.
That was a good initial effort, running down the opium pill mail-order enterprise.
But on setting down the cup his eye caught sight of the pill-box.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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