stramonium

From New Latin stramonium, stramonia (attested since the 1540s), of unknown origin. (Compare Italian stramonio, attested since at least the 1560s.) The English word is attested since the 1660s. Some older dictionaries speculated that stramonium, as well as Russian дурма́н (durmán), might derive from a Turkic source like Tatar *turman (“medicine for horses”), but the Russian word is now thought to be an internal (native) formation, and the Tatar word, properly дәрман (därman, “remedy”), derives from Persian.

• Rhymes: -əʊniəm

stramonium (countable and uncountable, plural stramoniums or stramonia)

1. The jimsonweed or thornapple plant, Datura stramonium.
2. A narcotic drug obtained from the dried leaves of this plant.

stramonium m (plural stramoniums)

1. (botany) alternative form of stramoine (“stramonium”)

• “stramonium”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
• “stramonium” in Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 1872–1877.