Meaning & use
Nepenthe
Last updated
A drug or other substance imagined to cause forgetfulness of pain or sorrow.
See it in a sentence
The poem describes wine as a kind of nepenthe, dulling the poet's grief.
For her, painting became a nepenthe that helped her forget the loss.
A note on using this word
The word comes from Homer's Odyssey, where a potion called nepenthe was said to banish sorrow; it's chiefly a literary term today.
Words with a similar meaning
anodynebalm
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