Basic Details
Word: Antidote
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: A medicine that stops a poison from harming the body. People also use it for anything that takes away a bad feeling, as when music is an antidote to boredom.
Synonyms: remedy, cure
Antonyms: poison
Sounds like: anecdote (a short, interesting story about a real event)
Word origin: From Greek antidoton, 'something given against'.
How to Spell Antidote
Syllables: an - ti - dote
Tricky part: The prefix is anti, meaning against, not ante, meaning before. The ending is dote with a silent e, not dot.
Watch out for: antedote, antidot, anitdote
Memory tip: Anti means against, and an antidote is a dose given against a poison. The dote at the end comes from the same Greek root as dose.
Usage Examples
Example 1: The hospital in our district keeps an antidote for snake bites in its emergency ward.
Example 2: A long walk in the park was a good antidote to the dull afternoon.
Example 3: Scientists took many years to develop an antidote for that rare poison.
Fun Fact
Many snake-bite antidotes, called antivenoms, are made by giving horses tiny, safe doses of venom and collecting the protective antibodies their blood produces.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Makeup
Choose the prefix that completes the word:
____dote
a) ante
b) anti
c) anto
d) anty
Show answer
b) anti. Anti means against, and an antidote works against a poison.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) perscription
b) penicilin
c) imunity
d) antidote
Show answer
d) antidote. Antidote is right; penicillin needs two l's, immunity two m's and prescription starts with pre.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
dotetina
a) attained
b) anecdote
c) antidote
d) annotate
Show answer
c) antidote. Anecdote has a c and annotate has two n's; only antidote fits these eight letters.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A doctor would give an antidote to someone who has ____.
a) a sore throat from singing
b) swallowed poison
c) a broken arm
d) lost a tooth
Show answer
b) swallowed poison
2. Jokes with her cousins were an antidote to Nisha's bad mood. Here antidote means ____.
a) a type of joke
b) a kind of medicine for colds
c) something that takes away a bad feeling
d) something that makes a feeling worse
Show answer
c) something that takes away a bad feeling
