Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A love potion.
- n. A magic potion or charm.
- v. To enchant with or as if with a philter.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A potion supposed to have the power of exciting sexual love; a love-potion.
- To impregnate with a love-potion: as, to philter a draught.
- To excite to sexual love or desire by a potion.
Wiktionary
- n. A kind of potion, charm, or drug, sometimes specifically for making the drinker fall in love with the giver.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A potion or charm intended to excite the passion of love.
- v. To impregnate or mix with a love potion.
- v. To charm to love; to excite to love or sexual desire by a potion.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a drink credited with magical power; can make the one who takes it love the one who gave it
Etymologies
- French philtre, from Old French, from Latin philtrum, from Greek philtron, from philein, to love, from philos, beloved, loving.
Examples
“And, perchance still failing, then might I expect the common bravo's steel in my back or the common poisoner's philter in my wine, my meat, or bread.”
“Past sand-colored mosques and beneath the mullioned windows I comb the streets looking for any evidence of a crocodile, but come up with nothing, save a popular extract of crocodile, a philter ointment whose label says, "For you and your happiness.”
The Huffington Post: Richard Bangs: Quest for the Lord of the Nile, Part II
“He half walked, half carried the asura back up the hill, where he dug through his pack filled with waxed-paper wrappings, finally producing a reddish philter.”
“Charles the Great enforced to love basely by a philter”
“Plutarch records of Lucullus that he died of a philter; and that Cleopatra used philters to inveigle Antony, amongst other allurements.”
“Aphonsi, hath a story of one Stephan, a Neapolitan knight, that by a philter was forced to run mad for love.”
“As for herbs and philters, I could never skill of them, The sole philter that ever I used was kissing and embracing, by which alone I made men rave like beasts stupefied, and compelled them to worship me like an idol.”
“St. Hierome proves that they can do it (as in Hilarius 'life, epist.lib. 3); he hath a story of a young man, that with a philter made a maid mad for the love of him, which maid was after cured by Hilarion.”
“King Duffe; characters stamped of sundry metals, and at such and such constellations, knots, amulets, words, philters, &c., which generally make the parties affected, melancholy; as [1276] Monavius discourseth at large in an epistle of his to Acolsius, giving instance in a Bohemian baron that was so troubled by a philter taken.”
“Rumor has it that she may have given him something called a "love-philter" to keep him impotent and away from her.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘philter’.
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Logophily: Words with "phil"
List of words containing the string phil-, -phil-, -phil, or -phile, such as philopatry, bibliophile, and neutrophil.
Greek: φιλία/φίλος, φιλια-/φιλο - love, loving, love of, fondness for, at...philopatry, bibliophile, neutrophil, thalassophily, stegophilist, philoxeny, psychrophile, logophily, photophilia, photophilous, heliophilous, philornithic and 148 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
johnmperry also philtre Jul 24, 2008