NOSTRUM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Nostrum

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Nostrum n. (pl. nostrums)

A medicine, the ingredients of which are kept secret for the purpose of restricting the profits of sale to the inventor or proprietor; a quack medicine.

Any scheme or device proposed by a quack. "The incentives of agitators, the arts of impostors and the nostrums of quacks."

Any scheme asserted to solve a problem, but with no objective basis for belief in its effectiveness; esp., in politics, a scheme or proposal likely to prove popular with voters.

See images of 'Nostrum'

Etymology of 'Nostrum'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Nostrum" Quotes from Famous Books

... that which he blushes not to have made them. If any lady should be offended with the lecturer's daring to take such liberties with her sex, by {57}way of atonement for that part of my behaviour which may appear culpable, I humbly beg leave to offer a nostrum, or recipe, to preserve the ladies' faces in perpetual bloom, and defend beauty from all assaults of time; and I dare venture to affirm, not all the paints, pomatums, or washes, can be of so much service to make the ladies look lovely as the application of ...

— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... est hospitem nostrum, dum varias artes colit, Musarum opus non neglexisse, stilo non minus quam lingua facundus; quem nos, Academici, magnis de rebus loquentem hodie ...

— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... inserted into a couple of their upper teeth, in order that wherever and whenever they may die, the gold may be present to purify them. [645] A similar idea was prevalent in Europe. Aurum potabile [646] or drinkable gold was a favourite nostrum of the Middle Ages, because gold being perfect should produce perfect health; and patients when in extremis were commonly given water in which gold had been washed. And the belief is referred to ...

— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum. ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

... officiis, patescebat nobis aditus faciles regal favoris intuitu, ad libros latebras libere perscruta tandas amoris quippe nostri fama volatitis jam ubiqs. percreluit tam qs. libros et maxime veterum ferabatur cupidite las vestere posse vero quemlibet nostrum per quaternos facilius quam per pecuniam adipisa favorem."—MS. Harl. fo. 85, a. MS. ...

— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

More quotes...