Find the word definition

Crossword clues for opium

opium
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
opium
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
den
▪ I haven't found out yet what they got up to in their opium den with Coleridge and de Quincey.
▪ The Vang Vieng area, north of Vientiane, is reputedly still full of opium dens.
poppy
▪ Rugged mountains, clear icy streams, and in springtime carpets of pink and blue opium poppies bending in the wind.
▪ Their annual income on an acre of opium poppy is about £300.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But what kind of person would want opium?
▪ Compared to the large opium fields nearby, the bikes were harmless.
▪ He pried off his shoes; loosened his collar; slumped in his seat like an opium smoker.
▪ It produces effects that mimic those of many other drugs, such as opium, cocaine, Valium, and ether.
▪ Lapsang Souchong was opium, bohemia, late nights and Gauloises.
▪ She was certainly not an opium smoker.
▪ The architect must have been an opium fiend.
▪ Where were the calomel pills and opium and brandy?
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Opium

Opium \O"pi*um\, n. [L., fr. Gr. ? poppy juice, dim. of ? vegetable juice.] (Chem.) The inspissated juice of the Papaver somniferum, or white poppy.

Note: Opium is obtained from incisions made in the capsules of the plant, and the best flows from the first incision. It is imported into Europe and America chiefly from the Levant, and large quantities are sent to China from India, Persia, and other countries. It is of a brownish yellow color, has a faint smell, and bitter and acrid taste. It is a stimulant narcotic poison, which may produce hallicinations, profound sleep, or death. It is much used in medicine to soothe pain and inflammation, and is smoked as an intoxicant with baneful effects.

Opium joint, a low resort of opium smokers. [Slang]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
opium

late 14c., from Latin opium, from Greek opion "poppy juice, poppy," diminutive of opos "vegetable juice." Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks. [Karl Marx, "Zur Kritik der Hegel'schen Rechts-Philosophie," in "Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher," February, 1844]\nThe British Opium War against China lasted from 1839-42; the name is attested from 1841.

Wiktionary
opium

n. 1 (context uncountable English) A yellow-brown, addictive narcotic drug obtained from the dried juice of unripe pods of the opium poppy, ''Papaver somniferum'', and containing alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, and papaverine. 2 (context countable English) Anything that numbs or stupefies.

WordNet
opium

n. an addictive narcotic extracted from seed capsules of the opium poppy

Wikipedia
Opium

Opium (poppy tears, with the scientific name: Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (scientific name: Papaver somniferum). Opium latex contains approximately 12 percent of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine, and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off and dehydrated. The word " meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to infant stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies.

The production of opium has not changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semisynthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum.

Opium for illegal use is often converted into heroin, which is less bulky, making it easier to smuggle, and which multiplies its potency to anywhere from twice to four times that of morphine.

Opium (KMFDM album)

Opium is the debut album by KMFDM released in 1984. There were only a handful of cassette copies made. The album was re-released in 2002 by KMFDM Records. It was originally recorded in Hamburg, Germany.

Opium is one of only two KMFDM studio albums ( Nihil being the other) that does not feature cover artwork by pop-artist Brute!.

Opium (disambiguation)

Opium is a plant latex that is a source of narcotic analgesic drugs

Opium may also refer to:

Opium (Moonspell song)

"Opium" is a song by the band Moonspell. It is from the album Irreligious and was released as a single.

The end of the song has a quote from one of Fernando Pessoa's heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos, from his poem Opiário.

Opium (Serebro song)

Опиум (Opioom (or Opium in English)) is the third released single by Russian girl band Serebro. Given to its order of release, the song is nicknamed "Song #3" after its predecessors " Song #1" and "Song #2" ( Дыши). This is the fourth song to be made public from Serebro's upcoming album after "What's Your Problem?" was performed at the RMA on 4 October 2007.

Opium (perfume)

Opium is an Oriental-spicy perfume created for fashion brand Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) by perfumer Jean Amic and Jean-Louis Sieuzac of Roure, first marketed in 1977. Its top notes are a mixture of fruit and spices, with mandarin orange, plum, clove, coriander and pepper, as well as bay leaf. Its floral middle notes consist predominantly jasmine, rose and Lily of the Valley, in addition to carnation, cinnamon, peach and orris root. It is underlined by the sweet woody base note containing sandalwood, cedarwood, myrrh, opopanax, labdanum, benzoin and castoreum, in addition to amber, incense, musk, patchouli, tolu and vetiver.

Opium (Matt Berry album)

Opium is an album by English musician Matt Berry.

Opium is Berry's second album, originally released in 2008.

Opium (film)

Opium is a 1919 German silent film directed by Robert Reinert and starring Eduard von Winterstein, Sybill Morel and Werner Krauss.

Opium (1949 film)

Opium (Spanish: Opio) is a 1949 Mexican crime film directed by Ramón Peón.

The film's sets were designed by Ramón Rodríguez Granada.

Opium (Jay-Jay Johanson album)

Opium is the tenth studio album by Swedish trip hop musician Jay-Jay Johanson. It is his first album to be distributed through Kwaidan Records.

Usage examples of "opium".

He stood by his assertion that cocaine could be useful in the process of weaning opium addicts from their addiction, justifiying this statement by asserting that cocaine would be addictive only to a certain type of weak personality.

Britain was not keen to legislate against addictive drugs was that it was making vast amounts of money by flogging opium to the Chinese.

They figured the Kurds, Afghanis, and Tuaregs already there would like a bit of smoke, and they could always refine opium into heroin if the Irish and Basques preferred needles to pipes.

Furthermore, deep stirrings within my own person are by no means absent: a consequence of my abstention, opium in all its forms being an antaphrodisiac, counteracting venereal desire.

Macao was astir with the progress of the pits being prepared at Chuenpi and the enormous stores of confiscated opium being piled behind bamboo fences that sealed off the area.

In the years following the First Opium War disasters multiplied, taxes were increased upon the peasantry, corruption in the governing mandarinate became systematic, respect for authority declined, power decentralized, banditry flourished, sovereignty rotted at the center.

He also ran casinos, dog tracks, was involved in illicit trades on the stock market, owned diamond mines, smuggled opium and probably had a finger in every dodgy pie imaginable .

Behrend observed an opium exanthem, which was attended by intolerable itching, after the exhibition of a quarter of a grain.

It was Rushad himself who would bring the opium tincture to the festal hall, late in the proceedings, and see it dispersed among the myriad pitchers of beer and kumis.

Next I bought a joint, a popper, a phial of cocaine and a plug of opium from a fat spade in Times Square and snuffled it all up in a gogo bar toilet.

I proved him the truth of what I had said by telling him that opium produced the same results as wine, but more powerfully, and consequently Mahomet ought to have forbidden the use of it.

He observed that he had never taken either wine or opium in the course of his life.

The glare of their black eyes was like those of Eastern eaters of hasheesh or opium, and they bounded to and fro as if their muscles were springs of steel.

On Friday night Garcia was recovering from a pipe or more of opium, and possibly a jorum of whisky.

Chinese wine would be consumed, pots of kaoliang cooked with rice prepared, and those who had opium would divide with those who had none.