tranquilize
English
Alternative forms
- tranquillize, tranquilise, tranquillise
Etymology
From Middle French tranquiliser.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA(key): /ˈtɹæŋkwɪlaɪz/
- Hyphenation: tran‧quil‧ize
Verb
tranquilize (third-person singular simple present tranquilizes, present participle tranquilizing, simple past and past participle tranquilized)
- (transitive) To calm (a person or animal) or put them to sleep using a tranquilizer dart.
- The escaped lion was finally tracked down, tranquilized, and safely returned to the zoo.
- Synonyms: dart, sedate
- 1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, New York: Dial, p. 255,
- Miss Ratched shall line us all against the wall, where we’ll face the terrible maw of a muzzle-loading shotgun which she has loaded with Miltowns! Thorazines! Libriums! Stelazines! And with a wave of her sword, blooie! Tranquilize all of us completely out of existence.
- 1962, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 2, p. 13,
- When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth.
- (transitive, now literary) To make (something or someone) tranquil.[1]
- Synonyms: appease, calm, pacify
- 1779, Frances Burney, Evelina, Dublin: Price, Corcoran et al., Volume 2, Letter 14, p. 87,
- […] with words of sweetest kindness and consolation, he soothed and tranquilised me.
- 1818, [Mary Shelley], Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, OCLC 830979744:
- […] I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose,—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
- 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 13, in My Bondage and My Freedom, New York: Miller, Orton and Mulligan:
- This threat, the reader may well suppose, was not very tranquilizing to my feelings.
- 1865, G. O. Trevelyan, Cawnpore, London: Macmillan, Chapter 5, p. 322,
- The column was placed under the orders of Major Renaud, who pushed up the road; fighting as occasion offered; tranquillizing the country by the very simple expedient of hanging everybody who showed signs of insubordination […]
- 1931, E. F. Benson, Mapp and Lucia, Chapter 4,
- Supported by an impregnable sense of justice but still dangerously fuming, Lucia went back to her garden-room, to tranquillize herself with an hour’s practice on the new piano.
- 1995, Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, Chapter 11, p. 497,
- But time had tranquillized Dina’s worries about the landlord.
- (intransitive, obsolete, rare) To become tranquil.
- Synonyms: calm down, relax
- 1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter I”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume V, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; […], OCLC 13631815, page 11:
- Seest thou not, that this unseasonable gravity is admitted to quell the palpitations of this unmanageable heart? But still it will go on with its boundings. I’ll try, as I ride in my chariot, to tranquillize.
Antonyms
- madden
Derived terms
- tranquilization
- tranquilizer
Translations
to use a drug to sedate a person or animal
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to make something or someone tranquil
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to become tranquil
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to calm down
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References
- Thomas Blount, Glossographia, London: George Sawbridge, 1661: “Tranquillize […] to make quiet, still or calm, to cause tranquility.”
Portuguese
Verb
tranquilize
- inflection of tranquilizar:
- first/third-person singular present subjunctive
- third-person singular imperative