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morphine

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈmɔː.fiːn//
  • United States//ˈmɔɹˌfin//
  • Australia//ˈmoː.fiːn//

A crystalline alkaloid (4,5-epoxy-17-methyl-7,8-didehydromorphinan-3,6-diol), extracted from opium, the salts of which are soluble in water and are used as analgesics, anaesthetics and sedatives; it is one of a group of morphine alkaloids.

noun

  1. 1

    A crystalline alkaloid (4,5-epoxy-17-methyl-7,8-didehydromorphinan-3,6-diol), extracted from opium, the salts of which are soluble in water and are used as analgesics, anaesthetics and sedatives; it is one of a group of morphine alkaloids.

Etymology

Etymology tree Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) Pre-Greekder.? Ancient Greek -εύς (-eús) Ancient Greek Μορφεύς (Morpheús) Proto-Indo-European *-nós Proto-Indo-European *-iHnos Proto-Italic *-īnos Latin -īnus French -in Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂ Proto-Italic *-ā Latin -am Old French -e French -e French -ine French morphinebor. German Morphinbor. English morphine Borrowed from French morphine or German Morphin, from Ancient Greek Μορφεύς (Morpheús, “the god and personification of dreams”).

Forms

plural
morphines
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).