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Sedative   /sˈɛdətɪv/   Listen
Sedative

adjective
1.
Tending to soothe or tranquilize.  Synonyms: ataractic, ataraxic, tranquilising, tranquilizing, tranquillising, tranquillizing.  "Took a hot drink with sedative properties before going to bed"



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"Sedative" Quotes from Famous Books



... the vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervous system. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of the organisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is, relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strength of stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroids means removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is a change in, and then an escape, from the blood, of the lime, by ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... give his Reverence a sedative, Danny," he said, winking at his colleague. "I'd be sorry to see you that way, Father; the bed's narrow enough for you as it is, without having you ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... when his heart was heavy with a sense of personal loss and grim foreboding. None save Brit had slept during the night—and Brit had slept only because Lorraine had prudently given him a full dose of the sedative left by the doctor for that very purpose. Sorry had gone to Echo to send a telegram to the coroner, and he was likely to return now at any time. Wherefore Swan and Lone were going to look over the ground before others had trampled out what evidence ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... a door slammed, and a sudden cessation of the tumult showed that some one, in sheer self-defense, had given her morphia, the only sedative that could have any real effect. Then he turned, and became aware of the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... Hank asked anxiously as he peered through the window of the chamber. The medic had given Bud a sedative and he was already fast asleep. Tom ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... state of his flat, he was taken to the house of Dr. Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis through which he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second day he ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... awake, but abnormally awake, with every nerve highly strung, and every sense at the keenest. What was he to do to gain a little sleep? It flashed across him that there was brandy in the decanter downstairs, and that a glass might act as a sedative. ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... absolutely, and allowed me to see that any refusal on my part would make a breach between us. I left myself in her hands, to dress and adorn and lead about as she liked; I could not help it without an effort that would have parted us. And besides, I believe I accepted these engrossments of society as a sedative to keep me from thinking. They took a great deal of tine and occupied my ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... melancholy yet consolatory reflection crossed the mind of the unfortunate young nobleman with a breathing of comfort. Favourable to calm reflection, as well as to the Muses, the morning, while it dispelled the shades of night, had a composing and sedative effect upon the stormy passions by which the Master of Ravenswood had been agitated on the preceding day. He now felt himself able to analyse the different feelings by which he was agitated, and much resolved ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... to the body acts as a direct sedative. It diminishes the nervous sensibility, represses the activity of the circulation, detracts from the sum of the animal heat, and thereby diminishes stimulation. In the cessation of excitement and sensibility that ensues, the whole vital actions are moderated, existing irritation ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... shall DO therein: this, the essential function of a Parliament and Privy-Council, was here, by artless cheap methods, under the bidding of mere Nature, multifariously done; mere taciturnity and sedative smoke making the most of what natural intellect there might be. The substitution of Tobacco-smoke for Parliamentary eloquence is, by some, held to be a great improvement. Here is Smelfungus's opinion, quaintly expressed, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... safety! The drooping sun was now caught and hidden in its soft embraces. A sudden chill breathed over the mountain. He shivered, rose, and plunged again for very warmth into the spice-laden thicket. The heated balsamic air began to affect him like a powerful sedative; his hunger was forgotten in the languor of fatigue: he slumbered. When he awoke it was dark. He groped his way through the thicket. A few stars were shining directly above him, but beyond and below, everything was lost in the soft, white, fleecy veil of fog. Whatever ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... which every one felt in him. Even Herod, judging by rumour, counts him greater than John the Baptist (Matt. 14:2). The very malignity of his enemies is a confession of their recognition that they are dealing with some one who is great. Men remarked his sedative and controlling influence over the disordered mind (Mark 1:27). He is not to be trapped in his talk, to be cajoled or flattered. There is greatness in his language—in his reference of everything to great principles and to God; greatness ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... made no sign. He did not even thank her—only held her until every detail of her face had been studied. She let him do it, and only dropped her eyes and stood colouring warmly under the inquisition. It was as if she understood that the sight of her was a moment's sedative for an aching heart, and she must yield it or be more unkind than it was in the heart of woman to be. When he released her it was with a sigh that came up from the depths, and as she left him he stood and watched her until she ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... the common hemp plant, which provides hallucinogens with some sedative properties, and includes marijuana (pot, Acapulco gold, grass, reefer), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, Marinol), hashish (hash), and ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... inconceivable. It lasts long, and is the true difficulty in the way of forming anew habits of wholesome endurance. The physician who imagines that his case is well, because he has enabled an opium-taker to eat, sleep, and be comfortable without use of the sedative, can have seen little of the future of such people. The oversensitiveness to pain persists for months, and is a constant temptation. The moral and mental habits formed under opium—the irresolution, the recklessness, the want of shame, in a word, the general failure of all ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... pessimism; the acuteness of the stimulant was wearing off. There was an unhealthy streak in his mind somewhere, a streak that was growing under these blows which had been so liberally dealt him. Where was the use in struggling? he began to ask himself. And the poison of the thought acted like a sedative. He grew strangely calm; he almost experienced pleasure and comfort under its influence. Why struggle? Nothing could go right with him. Nothing. He was cursed—cursed with an ill-starred fortune. This sort of thing was his fate. Fate. That was it. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... ill with strain and sorrow, went upstairs to bed, the Von Behrens went away, and presently Acton disappeared, to telephone old Doctor Murray that his wife would like a sedative—or a heart stimulant, or some other little attention as a recognition of ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... look and manner when he was in earnest which effectually quelled the levity of his little admirer. The appeal to him for aid, also, had a sedative effect. As Phil went on, Pax became quite as serious as himself. This power of Pax to suddenly discard levity, and become interested, was indeed one of the qualities which rendered him powerfully ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... fix the attention without straining it. There is a composure and gravity in draughts which insensibly tranquillises the mind; and, accordingly, the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoaking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself never smoaked, he had a high opinion[936]. Besides, there is in draughts some exercise of the faculties; and, accordingly, Johnson wishing to dignify the subject in his Dedication with what is most estimable in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Vera was found sitting in a corner of the great hall, half dressed. Raisky and the priest's wife, who had just arrived, led her almost by force into her room and laid her down on the bed. Raisky sent for the doctor, to whom he tried to explain her indisposition. The doctor prescribed a sedative, which Vera drank without being any calmer for it; she often waked in her sleep to ask after ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... people living in the environment of modern civilization. There is a possibility, and even probability, that the defective nervous organization which predisposes to alcoholism would seek satisfaction in the use of some other sedative drug. So complex are all the interrelations of the social system that it would be possible to regard alcohol as an agent useful in removing the defective, were it not for its long-enduring action ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... said the doctor, smiling; "but I order it as a sedative medicine. It will do more good than anything I can give. It will ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... my departure and return. Her eagerness to have me read to her puzzled me at first, especially since she was indifferent as to what I read, but after a while I found that she prized my reading merely because it acted as a sedative. During the night sleep usually forsook her; but when I left she was generally sleeping peacefully. She permitted me to read the Bible as much as I chose. One day she explained the reason for her indifference in ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... literature, however, we meet with the suggestion that coffee drinking makes for sterility and barrenness, a notion that modern medicine has exploded; for now we know that coffee stimulates the racial instinct, for which tobacco is a sedative. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... keep your head! Now let me see.... A temporary sedative you require To bridge the dangerous moment. I suggest A little course that old Saint Anthony, Epicure though he was, would grant as rare And finely chosen: careless days and nights— Delicious gayeties—the Bacchic bowl— Exquisite company from whom some ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... Andersen. Major Elbertson is unconscious. He cannot report for duty. He was extremely ill from exposure to radiation and we have administered sulph-hydral, antispasmodic, and sedative." ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... when accompanied by a fair draught of tolerable porter, in some considerable degree to tranquillize the animal spirits; and that soothing effect began soon to be experienced by Mr. Titmouse. The sedative cause he erroneously considered to be the cigar he was smoking; whereas in fact the only tobacco he had imbibed was from the porter. But, however that might be, he certainly returned towards town in a calmer ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... to describe religious faith is the word anesthetic. Religious faith is a comfort to the old, the sick, and the suffering; but in general it is not a sedative, it is a tonic. It is a dynamo; it is a driving force. Henry Drummond, the most effective speaker on religion I can remember, said to a group of students: "I ask you to become Christians not because you may die tonight but because you are going to live ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... person; that I could procure neither answer nor the manuscript; and that but for an accident I should have had no copy of the Work itself. That such treatment would damp a young man's exertions may be easily conceived: there was no need of after-misrepresentation and calumny, as an additional sedative. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... revived for a check-up, but since he only mumbled incoherently, he was given a sedative. Two men began processing him for the vat. Coffin said he would make sure that the Com officer hadn't damaged any equipment. He went ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... trunks of cocoanut trees, and extending the entire length of the house, at least two hundred feet, was covered by the reclining forms of a host of chiefs and warriors who were eating at a great rate, or soothing the cares of Polynesian life in the sedative fumes of tobacco. The smoke was inhaled from large pipes, the bowls of which, made out of small cocoanut shells, were curiously carved in strange heathenish devices. These were passed from mouth to mouth by the recumbent smokers, each of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... wonderful stimulant. Ancient medical works make this statement, laying special emphasis upon its stimulating qualities. The drug does none of these things. Instead of being a stimulant, it comes closer to a sedative. This investigation set the author on the search for other herbs that now are or might be grown as an occupation. Then came the idea of a man who should grow these drugs professionally, and of the sick girl healed by them. "I ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... took his seat at the breakfast-table, and began to compose his spirits by the gentle sedative of a large cup of tea, the demulcent of a well-buttered muffin, and the tonic of a ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... have a tolerably spacious rag in this modern Byzantium. I thought that a few weeks here might restore that keen edge to my nervous system which the languor of the past term had in a measure blunted. I wished my visit to be a tonic rather than a sedative. I anticipated that on my return the cry would go round Cambridge, 'Psmith has been to New York. He is full of oats. For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise. He is hot stuff. Rah!' But ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more disgusting than inhalation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... persuaded myself nearly, if not entirely, that fancy, allied with terror, had conjured up, in that fatal hour, the cry which had sounded in my ears; at least I pacified my fears by repeating this supposition to myself. It was like a sedative, that numbs without removing the pain we feel. It made me better able to endure what I had to go through. Church was a terrible ordeal to me. I went of an afternoon only, for several following Sundays, because ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... physicians appear to have been acquainted. Chemists formerly entertained opinions extremely discordant in regard to the nature and the properties of camphor; and even at this day they seem to be but imperfectly known. It is considered however as a sedative and powerful diaphoretic: but my province is to mention such particulars of its history as have come within my knowledge, leaving to others to investigate its ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... still moved backward and forward, like an enraged tiger in his cage, without any further notice of Crackenfudge; who, on his part, felt likely to explode, unless he should soon disburden himself of his intelligence. Indeed, so confident did he feel of the sedative effect it would and must have upon the disturbed spirit of this dark and terrible man, that he resolved to risk an experiment, at all hazards, after his own way. He accordingly puckered his face into a grin that ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... capacity to exhilarate or pacify, according to the needs of a disordered mind. As a potent form of suggestion, it lends itself to the uses of psychiatry; it may be medicinally employed as a tonic, stimulant, or sedative. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... he seemed almost exhausted. His aunt explained that he had been growing weaker for some time past, and that his extra exertion the previous night in going to Fred's house and studying was too much for him. The physician gave him a mild sedative to quiet his nerves, and then left him ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... as a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeder's cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while Douce Davie poured ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Gabler. Active, constant cerebration on the part of the listener or the reader is essential. This excludes at once a considerable number to whom the effort of real thinking is as strange as it is oppressive. Browning is a stimulus, not a sedative; his poetry is like an electric current which naturally fails to affect those who are non-conductors of poetry. As one of my undergraduate students tersely expressed it, "Tennyson soothes our senses: Browning stimulates our thoughts." Poetry is in some ways like medicine. Tennyson quiets the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... around me in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, I at last chanced upon the Ethica of this man. To say exactly how much I gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my own reading of him would be impossible; enough that I found in him a sedative for my passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free outlook on the material and moral world. But what specially attached me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... shook his head. The symptoms, he said, indicated a serious shock to the nervous system. He wrote a sedative prescription; and he gave (with a happy choice of language) some sound and safe advice. It amounted briefly to this: "Take her away, and try the sea-side." Lady Janet's customary energy acted on the advice, without a moment's needless delay. She gave the necessary directions ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... man I was continually measuring my strength; and as I conceived that I found, myself woefully wanting, he proved an excellent moral sedative to my else too rampant vanity. Few, indeed, were the persons who could feel themselves at ease under the withering sarcasms of his intolerable insolence. Much more to their astonishment than to their instruction, he would very ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... ordinarily turned to the sporting columns of the Sunday papers, but today he found his thoughts reverting to church-going as a not unpleasant sedative after the storm and stress of his campaign. Reasons multiplied: it would be a sop to the prejudices of no small body of the voting population; an act of tolerance worthy of a mind open to broad horizons; a lightning-rod for supernatural ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther



Words linked to "Sedative" :   sedate, medication, glutethimide, Doriden, medicine, street drug, medicament, medicinal drug, ataraxic, chloral hydrate, drug of abuse, downer, tranquilizing



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