A medicine a doctor gives you to kill bacteria — very small living things that can get into a cut, your throat, or your lungs and make you ill — or to stop those bacteria growing, so you can get well. You may take it as pills, a liquid, or a drip in hospital. It can also describe the medicine: antibiotic cream, an antibiotic tablet. Though actually, it does nothing against viruses. A cold, most coughs, and flu are virus illnesses, so this drug will not shorten them. Using it then only teaches bacteria to survive the medicine, which is why careful doctors say no. In everyday talk here people still treat it like a general “strong drug”; in a clinic the word is precise: bacteria, not any germ at all.