prescription

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of establishing official rules, laws, or directions.
2. n. Something prescribed as a rule.
3. n. A written order, especially by a physician, for the preparation and administration of a medicine or other treatment.
4. n. A prescribed medicine or other treatment.
5. n. An ophthalmologist's or optometrist's written instruction, as for the grinding of corrective lenses.
6. n. A formula directing the preparation of something.
7. n. Law The process of acquiring title to property by reason of uninterrupted possession of specified duration. Also called positive prescription.
8. n. Law The limitation of time beyond which an action, debt, or crime is no longer valid or enforceable. Also called negative prescription.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of prescribing or establishing by rules; that which is prescribed; direction; prescript.
2. n. In medicine, a statement, usually written, of the medicines or remedies to be used by a patient, and the manner of using them.
3. n. In law, a personal use or possession sufficiently long continued to secure to one or more persons a title or right as against others; the effect on rights of persons of the immemorial or long-continued and uninterrupted enjoyment of a thing, as a right of way or of common, by one person or class or succession of persons rather than by another or others: as, to acquire possession of a thing by prescription. After uninterrupted enjoyment for thirty, and in many cases for twenty years, a prima facie title arises by prescription to the thing enjoyed.
4. n. Hence, more specifically— The acquisition of a right or title by such enjoyment, called sometimes positive or acquisitive prescription.
5. n. The loss of a right or title by suffering another to enjoy it, or by neglecting to assert it: called sometimes negative prescription.

Wiktionary

1. n. law The act of prescribing a rule, law, etc..
2. n. law A period of time within which a right must be exercised, unless the right is extinguished.
3. n. medicine A written order, as by a physician, for the administration of a medicine or other intervention. See also scrip.
4. n. medicine The prescription medicine or intervention so prescribed.
5. n. ophthalmology The formal description of the lens geometry needed for spectacles, etc..
6. n. A piece of advice.
7. adj. of a drug, etc. only available with a physician's written prescription

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of prescribing, directing, or dictating; direction; precept; also, that which is prescribed.
2. n. (Med.) A direction of a remedy or of remedies for a disease, and the manner of using them; a medical recipe; also, a prescribed remedy. a written order from a physician for a medication, which allows a patient to legally obtain medication which is required by law to be dispensed only on authorization from a physician or other qualified medical practitioner.
3. n. (Law) A prescribing for title; the claim of title to a thing by virtue of immemorial use and enjoyment; the right or title acquired by possession had during the time and in the manner fixed by law.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. available only with a doctor's written prescription
2. n. written instructions for an optician on the lenses for a given person
3. n. a drug that is available only with written instructions from a doctor or dentist to a pharmacist
4. n. directions prescribed beforehand; the action of prescribing authoritative rules or directions
5. n. written instructions from a physician or dentist to a druggist concerning the form and dosage of a drug to be issued to a given patient