polypharmacy · noun — the use of multiple drugs to treat multiple concurrent disorders in the same (now especially elderly) patient, chiefly with connotations of indiscriminate or excessive prescription (involving overmedication and overprescription). It carries an Arena rating of 1435, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, polypharmacy ranks #104 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #902 of 17,142 for Scariest Words, #1,641 of 17,156 for Most Exacting Words, #3,323 of 17,135 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound.
Why “polypharmacy” is a great word
The concurrent use of multiple medications, often to an excessive or hazardous degree. From poly- (Greek, meaning "many") + pharmacy (Greek pharmakon, meaning "drug"), after Ancient Greek πολυφάρμακος (poluphármakos, "using many drugs"). First recorded in English 1755–65. Unlike "monotherapy," which denotes a single, targeted agent, or "deprescribing," the active pruning of a regimen, polypharmacy is the thicket itself. It is the rattle of a dozen amber bottles in a plastic bag, the silent chemical warfare waged in an aging liver, and the glazed confusion of a patient trying to parse which pill is for the cure and which is for the side-effect of another—a modern, medicinal kind of fog, where the cure for the disease becomes a disease of its own.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From poly- + pharmacy, after Ancient Greek πολυφάρμακος (poluphármakos).
noun
- The use of multiple drugs to treat multiple concurrent disorders in the same (now especially elderly) patient, chiefly with connotations of indiscriminate or excessive prescription (involving overmedication and overprescription).e.g.“Critics denounced physicians as meddlesome, capriciously practising an often dangerous polypharmacy – a blunderbuss approach.” — 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 226:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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