Pentobarbitals

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A class of medications that act as central nervous system depressants, primarily used for their sedative and anesthetic properties
2. They are barbiturates commonly prescribed for anxiety, insomnia, and certain seizure disorders
3. These compounds can induce sleepiness and reduce anxiety, but carry a risk of dependence and overdose when misused

Etymology: "Pentobarbitals" is simply the plural of "pentobarbital," the name for a barbiturate drug, and the plural is used when speaking of the drug as a class. The name is a chemical coinage built from two parts: "barbital," the first barbiturate, which took its name from Barbara, the name of a woman popularly linked to the discovery, joined with "pentyl," a five-carbon chain of atoms, and the connecting vowel "-o-." The "pent-" in the name points to that five-carbon group, which distinguishes this drug from its relatives. The "barb-" in the name, incidentally, has nothing to do with barbs or barbarians. It comes from the barbital naming that chemists used when they set out to label a family of related compounds, and the name was chosen to sound like the older word "barbital" rather than to describe the molecule's shape.