Opiums

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of substances derived from the opium poppy, often used for their narcotic effects
2. A variety of products or compounds extracted from the latex of the opium poppy, primarily known for inducing euphoria
3. A collection of alkaloids obtained from a specific plant, commonly associated with pain relief and sedation

Etymology: "Opiums" is the plural of "opium," so it is the form that refers to more than one kind of the drug, or to several separate preparations of it. The singular goes back to ancient Greek, where "ópion" was a little diminutive-style word built from "opós," meaning the juice or sap of a plant. The sap in question was the milky fluid that oozes from the unripe seed pods of the poppy when they are cut, which is why the drug's name begins as nothing more than a word for plant juice. The Greeks used "ópion" for that concentrated sap, and the Romans borrowed it as "opium," keeping the sense of a narcotic extract. English then took the word from Latin, so the drug was named for its juice long before anyone thought of it as a single chemical. The root "opós" traces back to a much older word for juice or resin, but the story that matters for English is the poppy sap itself.