Pill

How to spell pill

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pill

What does pill mean?

1. nounA small rounded tablet or capsule of medicine that is swallowed whole.
2. verbOf a fabric, to form small balls of fibre on its surface through wear.

Pill in a sentence

• noun

  The doctor told her to take one pill with breakfast each morning.

• verb

  Cheap wool sweaters often pill after only a few washes.

• noun

  He struggled to swallow the large pill without water.

• verb

  The cushion covers began to pill where people leaned against them.

Where does pill come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin pilula, meaning 'a little ball', which was a diminutive of pila, the Latin word for 'ball'. Medieval pharmacists rolled medicine into small balls so it could be swallowed easily, and that compact shape gave the object its name. English picked the word up in the late fifteenth century, possibly by way of Middle Dutch pille and Middle Low German pille, and by then the spelling had been worn down to the short, simple form we still use. The same pila root for 'ball' survives in 'pellet' and in the game term 'pelota', which is a useful reminder that a pill was originally just a tiny rounded thing. Because the modern word is so short and phonetic, its only trap is the doubled letter at the end.

How the word is built

• pill (single root, from Latin pilula 'little ball')