Pharm

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A shortened, informal way of referring to a pharmacy or to the drug industry and medicines it deals in
2. An abbreviated everyday label for a drugstore or for the business of producing and selling medicinal products
3. Informal clipped term standing for either a dispensary of medicines or the pharmaceutical trade as a whole

Etymology: "Pharm" is a blend of "pharmaceutical" and "farm," so it is a clipped modern coinage rather than an old word that changed shape over time. The first half, "pharmaceutical," traces back through Medieval Latin "pharmaceuticus" to Greek "pharmakeutikos," relating to the use of drugs and remedies, and the second half is the ordinary English word for a tract of cultivated land. The blend joins those two halves to name the practice of producing medicines on a large scale using farmed or genetically modified animals or plants, most often livestock engineered to yield therapeutic proteins in their milk. The fused form captures both the industrial manufacturing of drugs and the agricultural setting in which the work takes place.

Synonyms: pharmacy, drugstore