- 1鴉片
Opium is a strong drug that comes from a kind of poppy. People cut the still-green seed pod and a milky juice comes out; when that juice dries, it becomes a dark, sticky stuff. That is opium. It is not the tiny seeds you see on bread — those are not the drug. For a very long time doctors used opium to quiet terrible pain and to help people sleep. We still make serious hospital medicines from it, such as . Used for pleasure — smoked or eaten — it is illegal in most places, and it is dangerous: the body can start to need it, and too much can stop a person breathing. students often already know the history: in the nineteenth century, the trade in opium caused great harm in China. In English you may also hear “the opium of the people,” which is a picture, not a drug — something that keeps people calm and dreamy so they do not fight what is wrong. That use is for essays, not for everyday talk.
From the word’s history
From Latin opium and Ancient Greek ὄπιον, from ὀπός 'juice of a plant'.
借自拉丁文 opium，源自希臘文 ὀπός「植物汁液」。
組成Borrowed from Latin opium and Ancient Greek ópion, from opós (“juice of a plant”), from Proto-Indo-European *sokʷós (“juice, resin”).
同家族的字
- opiatea drug of this family, built from the same Greek/Latin root
- opioida later scientific word for drugs that act like opium
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
opiumnoun/ˈoʊ.pi.əm/
- 1
A yellow-brown, addictive narcotic drug obtained from the dried juice of unripe pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, and containing alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, and papaverine.
- From hence we firſt ſailed to Achin, in the iſland of Sumatra, and then to Siam, where we bartered our wares for ſome arrack and opium, the laſt of which bore a great price among the Chineſe:[…]
- Opium is largely used by the Chinese as a sexual provocation, both by men and women.
- 2
Anything that numbs or stupefies.
- Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, […] It is the opium of the people.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。