Translation
drug, narcotic
Word origin
From French drogue, a word for a raw pharmaceutical substance whose own origin is disputed. Esperanto took the pharmacist's sense first and the street sense later, exactly as the European languages did.
- Origin
- French
- Root
- drogue
- English cognates
- drug, druggist
Other proposed origins
- Most dictionaries trace drogue to Middle Dutch droge vate, 'dry barrels', the containers dried herbs were shipped in, with the label sliding onto the contents. (Middle Dutch, droge)
- A competing account starts from Old French drogue in the sense of a worthless thing, and has the medical meaning develop out of that. (Old French, drogue)
Examples
.
The police found drugs in the old car.
.
Drugs destroy young people.
, .
Against pain the doctor gives a medicine, not a narcotic.
is a false friend, and an expensive one. English drug covers both the thing a pharmacist dispenses and the thing a dealer sells; Esperanto split those two jobs between two roots and gave the second one. In ordinary modern usage means a narcotic, and on a police report or a health poster means exactly what "drugs" means in the same place. What the doctor prescribes is a , and if you ask a pharmacist for you will get a look.
The older sense survives in a couple of places and explains where the word came from. A o is a druggist in the nineteenth-century sense - somebody selling raw chemicals, dyes and dried herbs, not an apotekisto filling prescriptions - and originally named that stock in trade. The narcotic meaning is a twentieth-century narrowing, and it has now taken the word over completely.
The safe habit is to translate by the situation, never by the letter: hospital and prescription contexts want , addiction and crime contexts want . More traps of the same shape are collected in the guide to false friends in Esperanto.
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drogo: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Esperanto word "drogo" (drug, narcotic): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 37.