Antidote

How to spell antidote

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce antidote

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antidote mean?

1. nounA medicine or other agent that counteracts a poison, or anything that counteracts an unpleasant effect.

Antidote in a sentence

• The hospital kept an antidote for snake venom on hand.

• A quiet weekend in the country is the perfect antidote to a stressful week.

Where does antidote come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek antidoton, which literally meant 'given against' something. It was built from anti, meaning 'against', and the verb didonai, meaning 'to give', so an antidoton was a remedy given to counter a poison. The term passed into Latin as antidotum and then reached English in the early 1400s, partly through Old French. The shared 'give' root, dotos, also lurks in words like 'dose' and 'anecdote', which all trace back to the same Greek idea of giving. A useful spelling cue is that the front is 'anti' (against), not 'ante' (before), since an antidote works against a poison rather than coming before it.

How the word is built

• anti- (against)
• dote (from Greek dotos: given)