Medicyn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An archaic spelling of medicine, meaning a substance or treatment used to cure or relieve illness
2. An old form of the word for medicine, referring to a remedy or healing treatment given to the sick
3. Obsolete term for medicine, used in older English to describe a drug or therapy intended to heal disease

Etymology: "Medicyn" is a Middle English spelling of "medicine," and it shows a word that once centred on cure rather than on a profession. Its ancestor is Latin "medicina," the art of healing, formed from "medicus," a physician, which comes from "mederi," to heal. That same Latin root gave English a family of words that all turn on curing, including medic, medical and medicate. The word reached English through Old French "medecine," and Middle English writers spelled it in many ways before the modern form became standard. Spellings such as "medicyn" reflect a period when conventions for writing English were still unsettled, so one word could appear in several forms even within the same text.