Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A universal remedy; a panacea.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A remedy for all diseases; a universal remedy; a panacea; specifically, a kind of soft purgative electuary so called.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) A remedy for all diseases; a panacea.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun medicine A supposed universal remedy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun hypothetical remedy for all ills or diseases; once sought by the alchemists

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin, from Greek katholikon, generic description, from neuter of katholikos, universal; see catholic.]

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Examples

  • The most gentle purges to begin with, are [4255] senna, cassia, epithyme, myrabolanea, catholicon: if these prevail not, we may proceed to stronger, as the confection of hamech, pil.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of im mortality.

    Religio Medici 2007

  • And at a given moment one of these, hitherto dormant and unsuspected, would suddenly begin to brew, and go on growing till he was all one senseless panic, blind flight the only catholicon.

    Ultima Thule 2003

  • There is no _catholicon_ or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and

    Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing George Barton Cutten

  • Unfortunately, I have no catholicon for every industrial ill -- but the political drug-stores are full of 'em.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12 1919

  • It is now only exceptionally that the cantharus is found doing service as a holy water font, mainly at Mount Athos, where the phiala of the monastery of Laura stands near the catholicon in front of the entrance and is covered by

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • If we knew of any chemical preparation by which we could change the color of our skins and straighten our hair we might hope to bring about the desired consummation at once, but alas, there is no catholicon for this ill, no mystic concoction in all the pharmacies of earth to work this miracle of color.

    Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of Slavery to the Present Time Various 1905

  • If we knew of any chemical preparation by which we could change the color of our skins and straighten the kinks in our hair, we might hope to bring about the desired consummation at once, but alas, there is no catholicon for this ill, no mystic concoction in all the pharmacies of earth to work

    The Negro and the White Man Wesley John 1897

  • A man who is not a hopelessly bad critic, though he may not have in him the _catholicon_ of critical goodness, may fail to appreciate _La Morte Amoureuse_ because of its dreaminess and supernaturality and all-for-loveness; _Carmen_ because Carmen shocks him; _La Venus d'Ille_ because of its _macabre_ tone; _Les Jeune-France_ because of their _goguenarderie_ or _goguenardise_.

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • After long and wearied deliberations extending over whole weeks, and while a nation's anxious eyes, hopeful and expectant, were rivetted upon them, they agreed upon a political catholicon -- one-sided, as usual, and unjust to the South.

    Cause and contrast : an essay on the American crisis, T. W. MacMahon 1862

Comments

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  • "These coca leaves, which he had first encountered in South America, were his present, purely personal, catholicon, and although he traveled with enough, packed in soft leather bags, to last him twice round the world, he was remarkably abstemious..."

    --Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 135

    March 6, 2008

  • And here I thought this word meant something else....

    March 6, 2008